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SAN  DIE6O 


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THE  WRITINGS   OF 
OLIVER  WENDELL    HOLMES 

IN  THIRTEEN  VOLUMES 
VOLUME   II. 


THE  PROFESSOR 

AT 

THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE 


WITH 


of  (|r 


BY 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


BOSTON    AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 
Cfce  fifoerstoe  $ittf 

M  DCCC  XCII 


Copyright,  1859,  1887,  and  1891, 
BY  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge.  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  aud  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


PREFACE  TO  REVISED  EDITION. 


THE  reader  of  to-day  will  not  forget,  I  trust,  that 
it  is  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  these  papers 
were  written.  Statements  whiah  were  true  then  are 
not  necessarily  true  now.  Thus,  the  speed  of  the  trot 
ting  horse  has  been  so  much  developed  that  the  record 
of  the  year  when  the  fastest  time  to  that  date  was 
given  must  be  very  considerably  altered,  as  may  be 
seen  by  referring  to  a  note  on  page  49  of  the  "Auto 
crat."  No  doubt  many  other  statements  and  opinions 
might  be  more  or  less  modified  if  I  were  writing  to 
day  instead  of  having  written  before  the  war,  when 
the  world  and  I  were  both  more  than  a  score  of  years 
younger. 

These  papers  followed  close  upon  the  track  of  the 
"Autocrat.*'  They  had  to  endure  the  trial  to  which 
all  second  comers  are  subjected,  which  is  a  formidable 
ordeal  for  the  least  as  well  as  the  greatest.  Paradise 
Regained  and  the  Second  Part  of  Faust  are  examples 
which  are  enough  to  warn  every  one  who  has  made  a 
single  fair  hit  with  his  arrow  of  the  danger  of  missing 
When  he  looses  "his  fellow  of  the  selfsame  flight." 

There  is  good  reason  why  it  should  be  so.  The  first 
juice  that  runs  of  itself  from  the  grapes  comes  from 
the  heart  of  the  fruit,  and  tastes  of  the  pulp  only; 
when  the  grapes  are  squeezed  in  the  press  the  flow  be 
trays  the  flavor  of  the  skin.  If  there  is  any  freshness 


VI  PREFACE   TO    REVISED   EDITION. 

in  the  original  idea  of  the  work,  if  there  is  any  indi 
viduality  in  the  method  or  style  of  a  new  author,  or 
of  an  old  author  on  a  new  track,  it  will  have  lost 
much  of  its  first  effect  when  repeated.  Still,  there 
have  not  been  wanting  readers  who  have  preferred 
this  second  series  of  papers  to  the  first.  The  new  pa 
pers  were  more  aggressive  than  the  earlier  ones,  and 
for  that  reason  found  a  heartier  welcome  in  some 
quarters,  and  met  with  a  sharper  antagonism  in  oth 
ers.  It  amuses  me  to  look  back  on  some  of  the  at 
tacks  they  called  forth.  Opinions  which  do  not  ex 
cite  the  faintest  show  of  temper  at  this  time  from 
those  who  do  not  accept  them  were  treated  as  if  they 
were  the  utterances  of  a  nihilist  incendiary.  It  re 
quired  the  exercise  of  some  forbearance  not  to  recrim 
inate. 

How  a  stray  sentence,  a  popular  saying,  the  maxim 
of  some  wise  man,  a  line  accidentally  fallen  upon  and 
remembered,  will  sometimes  help  one  when  he  is  all 
ready  to  be  vexed  or  indignant!  One  day,  in  the 
time  when  I  was  young  or  youngish,  I  happened  to 
open  a  small  copy  of  "Tom  Jones,"  and  glance  at  the 
title-page.  There  was  one  of  those  little  engravings 
opposite,  which  bore  the  familiar  name  of  "T.  Uwins," 
as  I  remember  it,  and  under  it  the  words  "Mr.  Par 
tridge  bore  all  this  patiently."  How  many  tunes, 
when,  after  rough  usage  from  ill-mannered  critics,  my 
own  vocabulary  of  vituperation  was  simmering  in  such 
a  lively  way  that  it  threatened  to  boil  and  lift  its  lid 
and  so  boil  over,  those  words  have  calmed  the  small 
internal  effervescence !  There  is  very  little  in  them 
and  very  little  of  them;  and  so  there  is  not  much  in 
a  linchpin  considered  by  itself,  but  it  often  keeps  a 
wheel  from  coming  off  and  prevents  what  might  be  a 


PREFACE   TO    REVISED    EDITION.  vil 

catastrophe.  The  chief  trouble  in  offering  such  pa 
pers  as  these  to  the  readers  of  to-day  is  that  their  her 
esies  have  become  so  familiar  among  intelligent  people 
that  they  have  too  commonplace  an  aspect.  All  the 
light-houses  and  land-marks  of  belief  bear  so  differ 
ently  from  the  way  in  which  they  presented  them 
selves  when  these  papers  were  written  that  it  is  hard 
to  recognize  that  we  and  our  fellow-passengers  are 
still  in  the  same  old  vessel  sailing  the  same  unfathom 
able  sea  and  bound  to  the  same  as  yet  unseen  harbor. 
But  after  all,  there  is  not  enough  theology,  good  or 
bad,  in  these  papers  to  cause  them  to  be  inscribed  on 
the  protestant  Index  Expurgatorius  ;  and  if  they  are 
medicated  with  a  few  questionable  dogmas  or  anti- 
dogmas,  the  public  has  become  used  to  so  much 
rougher  treatment  that  what  was  once  an  irritant  may 
now  act  as  an  anodyne,  and  the  reader  may  nod  over 
pages  which,  when  they  were  first  written,  would  have 
waked  him  into  a  paroxysm  of  protest  and  denuncia 
tion. 

November,  1882. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  NEW  EDITION. 


THIS  book  is  one  of  those  which,  if  it  lives  for  a 
number  of  decades,  and  if  it  requires  any  Preface  at 
all,  wants  a  new  one  every  ten  years.  The  first  Pre 
face  to  a  book  is  apt  to  be  explanatory,  perhaps  apol 
ogetic,  in  the  expectation  of  attacks  from  various 
quarters.  If  the  book  is  in  some  points  in  advance  of 
public  opinion,  it  is  natural  that  the  writer  should  try 
to  smooth  the  way  to  the  reception  of  his  more  or  less 
aggressive  ideas.  He  wishes  to  convince,  not  to 
offend,  —  to  obtain  a  hearing  for  his  thought,  not  to 
stir  up  angry  opposition  in  those  who  do  not  accept  it. 
There  is  commonly  an  anxious  look  about  a  first  Pre 
face.  The  author  thinks  he  shall  be  misapprehended 
about  this  or  that  matter,  that  his  well-meant  expres 
sions  will  probably  be  invidiously  interpreted  by  those 
whom  he  looks  upon  as  prejudiced  critics,  and  if  he 
deals  with  living  questions  that  he  will  be  attacked  as 
a  destructive  by  the  conservatives  and  reproached  for 
his  timidity  by  the  noisier  radicals.  The  first  Pre 
face,  therefore,  is  likely  to  be  the  weakest  part  of  a 
work  containing  the  thoughts  of  an  honest  writer. 

After  a  time  the  writer  has  cooled  down  from  his  ex 
citement,  has  got  over  his  apprehensions,  is  pleased  to 
find  that  his  book  is  still  read,  and  that  he  must  write 
a  new  Preface.  He  comes  smiling  to  his  task.  How 
many  things  have  explained  themselves  in  the  ten  or 


PREFACE  TO   THE  NEW   EDITION.  IX 

twenty  or  thirty  years  since  he  came  before  his  untried 
public  in  those  almost  plaintive  paragraphs  in  which 
he  introduced  himself  to  his  readers,  — for  the  Pre 
face  writer,  no  matter  how  fierce  a  combatant  he  may 
prove,  comes  on  to  the  stage  with  his  shield  on  his 
right  arm  and  his  sword  in  his  left  hand. 

The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast-Table  came  out  in 
the  "Atlantic  Monthly  "  and  introduced  itself  without 
any  formal  Preface.  A  quarter  of  a  century  later  the 
Preface  of  1882,  which  the  reader  has  just  had  laid 
before  him,  was  written.  There  is  no  mark  of  worry, 
I  think,  in  that.  Old  opponents  had  come  up  and 
shaken  hands  with  the  author  they  had  attacked  or 
denounced.  Newspapers  which  had  warned  their  sub 
scribers  against  him  were  glad  to  get  him  as  a  con 
tributor  to  their  columns.  A  great  change  had  come 
over  the  community  with  reference  to  their  beliefs. 
Christian  believers  were  united  as  never  before  in  the 
feeling  that,  after  all,  their  common  object  was  to 
elevate  the  moral  and  religious  standard  of  humanity. 
But  within  the  special  compartments  of  the  great 
Christian  fold  the  marks  of  division  have  pronounced 
themselves  in  the  most  unmistakable  manner.  As  an 
example  we  may  take  the  lines  of  cleavage  which  have 
shown  themselves  in  the  two  great  churches,  the  Con 
gregational  and  the  Presbyterian,  and  the  very  distinct 
fissure  which  is  manifest  in  the  transplanted  Angli 
can  church  of  this  country.  Recent  circumstances 
have  brought  out  the  fact  of  the  great  change  in  the 
dogmatic  communities  which  has  been  going  on 
silently  but  surely.  The  licensing  of  a  missionary, 
the  transfer  of  a  Professor  from  one  department  to 
another,  the  election  of  a  Bishop,  —  each  of  these 
movements  furnishes  evidence  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  an  air-tight  reservoir  of  doctrinal  finalities. 


X  PREFACE   TO   THE   NEW   EDITION. 

The  folding-doors  are  wide  open  to  every  Protestant 
to  enter  all  the  privileged  precincts  and  private  apart 
ments  of  the  various  exclusive  religious  organizations. 
We  may  demand  the  credentials  of  every  creed  and 
catechise  all  the  catechisms.  So  we  may  discuss  the 
gravest  questions  unblamed  over  our  morning  coffee- 
cups  or  our  evening  tea-cups.  There  is  no  rest  for 
the  Protestant  until  he  gives  up  his  legendary  anthro 
pology  and  all  its  dogmatic  dependencies. 

It  is  only  incidentally,  however,  that  the  Professor 
at  the  Breakfast-Table  handles  matters  which  are  the 
subjects  of  religious  controversy.  The  reader  who  is 
sensitive  about  having  his  fixed  beliefs  dealt  with  as  if 
they  were  open  to  question  had  better  skip  the  pages 
which  look  as  if  they  would  disturb  his  complacency. 
"Faith "is  the  most  precious  of  possessions,  and  it 
dislikes  being  meddled  with.  It  means,  of  course, 
self -trust,  —  that  is,  a  belief  in  the  value  of  our  own 
opinion  of  a  doctrine,  of  a  church,  of  a  religion,  of  a 
Being,  a  belief  quite  independent  of  any  evidence  that 
we  can  bring  to  convince  a  jury  of  our  fellow  beings. 
Its  roots  are  thus  inextricably  entangled  with  those 
of  self-love  and  bleed  as  mandrakes  were  said  to,  when 
pulled  up  as  weeds.  Some  persons  may  even  at  this 
late  day  take  offence  at  a  few  opinions  expressed  in 
the  following  pages,  but  most  of  these  passages  will 
be  read  without  loss  of  temper  by  those  who  disagree 
with  them,  and  by-and-by  they  may  be  found  too 
timid  and  conservative  for  intelligent  readers,  if  they 
are  still  read  by  any. 

O.  W.  H. 

BEVEKLY  FAKMS,  MASS.,  June  IS,  1891. 


THE  PROFESSOR 

AT   THE 

BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

What  he  said,  what  he  heard,  and  what  he  saw. 

I. 

I  INTENDED  to  have  signalized  my  first  appearance 
by  a  certain  large  statement,  which  I  flatter  myself  is 
the  nearest  approach  to  a  universal  formula  of  life 
yet  promulgated  at  this  breakfast-table.  It  would 
have  had  a  grand  effect.  For  this  purpose  I  fixed  my 
eyes  on  a  certain  divinity-student,  with  the  intention 
of  exchanging  a  few  phrases,  and  then  forcing  my 
court-card,  namely,  The  great  end  of  being. — I  will 
thank  you  for  the  sugar,  —  I  said.  —  Man  is  a  de 
pendent  creature. 

It  is  a  small  favor  to  ask,  —  said  the  divinity- stu 
dent,  —  and  passed  the  sugar  to  me. 

—  Life  is  a  great  bundle  of  little  things,  —  I 
said. 

The  divinity-student  smiled,  as  if  that  were  the  con 
cluding  epigram  of  the  sugar  question. 

You  smile,  —  I  said.  —  Perhaps  life  seems  to  you  a 
little  bundle  of  great  things? 

The  divinity-student  started  a  laugh,  but  suddenly 
reined  it  back  with  a  pull,  as  one  throws  a  horse  on 


2        THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

his  haunches.  —  Life  is  a  great  bundle  of  great  things, 
—  he  said. 

(Now,  thenf)  The  great  end  of  being,  after  all, 
is  — 

Hold  on !  —  said  my  neighbor,  a  young  fellow  whose 
name  seems  to  be  John,  and  nothing  else,  —  for  that 
is  what  they  all  call  him,  —  hold  on !  the  Sculpin  is 
go'n'  to  say  somethin'. 

Now  the  Sculpin  (Coitus  Virginianus)  is  a  little 
water-beast  which  pretends  to  consider  itself  a  fish, 
and,  under  that  pretext,  hangs  about  the  piles  upon 
which  West-Boston  Bridge  is  built,  swallowing  the 
bait  and  hook  intended  for  flounders.  On  being 
drawn  from  the  water,  it  exposes  an  immense  head, 
a  diminutive  bony  carcass,  and  a  surface  so  full  of 
spines,  ridges,  ruffles,  and  frills,  that  the  naturalists 
have  not  been  able  to  count  them  without  quarrelling 
about  the  number,  and  that  the  colored  youth,  whose 
sport  they  spoil,  do  not  like  to  touch  them,  and  espe 
cially  to  tread  on  them,  unless  they  happen  to  have 
shoes  on,  to  cover  the  thick  white  soles  of  their  broad 
black  feet. 

When,  therefore,  I  heard  the  young  fellow's  ex 
clamation,  I  looked  round  the  table  with  curiosity  to 
see  what  it  meant.  At  the  further  end  of  it  I  saw  a 
head,  and  a  small  portion  of  a  little  deformed  body, 
mounted  on  a  high  chair,  which  brought  the  occupant 
up  to  a  fair  level  enough  for  him  to  get  at  his  food. 
His  whole  appearance  was  so  grotesque,  I  felt  for  a 
minute  as  if  there  was  a  showman  behind  him  who 
would  pull  him  down  presently  and  put  up  Judy,  or 
the  hangman,  or  the  Devil,  or  some  other  wooden  per 
sonage  of  the  famous  spectacle.  I  contrived  to  lose 
the  first  of  his  sentence,  but  what  I  heard  began  so :  — 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.         3 

—  by  the  Frog -Pond,  when  there  were  frogs  in 
it,  and  the  folks  used  to  come  down  from  the  tents  on 
'Lection  and  Independence  days  with  their  pails  to 
get  water  to  make  egg-pop  with.     Born  in  Boston; 
went  to  school  in  Boston  as  long  as  the  boys  would  let 
me.  — The  little  man  groaned,  turned,  as  if  to  look 
round,  and  went  on.  —  Ran  away  from  school  one  day 
to  see  Pliillips  hung  for  killing  Denegri  with  a  logger 
head.     That  was  in  flip  days,  when  there  were  always 
two  or  three  loggerheads  in  the  fire.     I  'm  a  Boston 
boy,  I  tell  you,  —  born  at  North  End,  and  mean  to  be 
buried  on  Copp's  Hill,  with  the  good  old  underground 
people,  —  the  Worthylakes,  and  the  rest  of  'em.    Yes, 
Sir,  —  up  on  the  old  hill,  where  they  buried  Captain 
Daniel  Malcolm  in  a  stone  grave,  ten  feet  deep,  to 
keep  him  safe  from  the  red-coats,  in  those  old  times 
when  the  world  was  frozen  up  tight  and  there  was  n't 
but  one  spot  open,  and  that  was  right  over  Faneuil 
Hall,  —  and   black   enough   it  looked,    I    tell    you ! 
There  's  where  my  bones  shall  lie,  Sir,  and  rattle  away 
when  the  big  guns  go  off  at  the  Navy  Yard  opposite ! 
You  can't  make  me  ashamed  of  the  old  place !     Full 
of  crooked  little  streets ;  —  I  was  born  and  used  to  run 
round  in  one  of  'em  — 

—  I  should  think  so,  —  said  that  young  man  whom 
I  hear  them  call  "John,"  —  softly,  not  meaning  to 
be  heard,  nor  to  be  cruel,  but   thinking  in  a  half- 
whisper,    evidently.  —  I    should    think   so ;  and    got 
kinked  up,  turnin'  so  many  corners.  —  The  little  man 
did  not  hear  what  was  said,  but  went  on,  — 

—  full   of   crooked   little    streets ;    but  I  tell  you 
Boston  has  opened,  and  kept  open,  more  turnpikes 
that  lead  straight  to  free  thought  and  free  speech  and 
free  deeds  than  any  other  city  of  live  men  or  dead 


4        THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

men,  —  I  don't  care  how  broad  their  streets  are,  nor 
how  high  their  steeples ! 

—  How  high  is  Bosting  meet'n'-house?  —  said  a 
person  with  black  whiskers  and  imperial,  a  velvet 
waistcoat,  a  guard-chain  rather  too  massive,  and  a 
diamond  pin  so  very  large  that  the  most  trusting  na 
ture  might  confess  an  inward  suggestion,  —  of  course, 
nothing  amounting  to  a  suspicion.  For  this  is  a  gen 
tleman  from  a  great  city,  and  sits  next  to  the  land 
lady's  daughter,  who  evidently  believes  in  him,  and  is 
the  object  of  his  especial  attention. 

How  high?  —  said  the  little  man.  —  As  high  as  the 
first  step  of  the  stairs  that  lead  to  the  New  Jerusalem. 
Is  n't  that  high  enough? 

It  is,  —  I  said.  —  The  great  end  of  being  is  to  har 
monize  man  with  the  order  of  things,  and  the  church 
has  been  a  good  pitch-pipe,  and  may  be  so  still.  But 
who  shall  tune  the  pitch-pipe?  Quis  cus  —  (On  the 
whole,  as  this  quotation  was  not  entirely  new,  and, 
being  in  a  foreign  language,  might  not  be  familiar  to 
all  the  boarders,  I  thought  I  would  not  finish  it.) 

—  Go  to  the  Bible !  —  said  a  sharp  voice  from  a 
sharp-faced,  sharp-eyed,  sharp-elbowed,  strenuous- 
looking  woman  in  a  black  dress,  appearing  as  if  it  be 
gan  as  a  piece  of  mourning  and  perpetuated  itself  as 
a  bit  of  economy. 

You  speak  well,  Madam, — I  said; — yet  there  is 
room  for  a  gloss  or  commentary  on  what  you  say. 
"  He  who  would  bring  back  the  wealth  of  the  Indies 
must  carry  out  the  wealth  of  the  Indies."  What  you 
bring  away  from  the  Bible  depends  to  some  extent  on 
what  you  carry  to  it.  —  Benjamin  Franklin !  Be  so 
good  as  to  step  up  to  my  chamber  and  bring  me  down 
the  small  uncovered  pamphlet  of  twenty  pages  which 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.        5 

you  will  find  lying  under  the  "Cruden's  Concordance." 
[The  boy  took  a  large  bite,  which  left  a  very  perfect 
crescent  in  the  slice  of  bread-and-butter  he  held,  and 
departed  on  his  errand,  with  the  portable  fraction  of 
his  breakfast  to  sustain  him  on  the  way.] 

Here  it  is.  "Go  to  the  Bible.  A  Dissertation, 
etc.,  etc.  By  J.  J.  Flournoy.  Athens,  Georgia, 
1858." 

Mr.  Flournoy,  Madam,  has  obeyed  the  precept 
which  you  have  judiciously  delivered.  You  may  be 
interested,  Madam,  to  know  what  are  the  conclusions 
at  which  Mr.  J.  J.  Flournoy  of  Athens,  Georgia,  has 
arrived.  You  shall  hear,  Madam.  He  has  gone  to 
the  Bible,  and  he  has  come  back  from  the  Bible, 
bringing  a  remedy  for  existing  social  evils,  which,  if 
it  is  the  real  specific,  as  it  professes  to  be,  is  of  great 
interest  to  humanity,  and  to  the  female  part  of  hu 
manity  in  particular.  It  is  what  he  calls  trigamy, 
Madam,  or  the  marrying  of  three  wives,  so  that 
"good  old  men  "  may  be  solaced  at  once  by  the  com 
panionship  of  the  wisdom  of  maturity,  and  of  those 
less  perfected  but  hardly  less  engaging  qualities  which 
are  found  at  an  earlier  period  of  life.  He  has  fol 
lowed  your  precept,  Madam;  I  hope  you  accept  his 
conclusions. 

The  female  boarder  in  black  attire  looked  so  puz 
zled,  and,  in  fact,  "all  abroad,"  after  the  delivery  of 
this  "counter"  of  mine,  that  I  left  her  to  recover  her 
wits,  and  went  on  with  the  conversation,  which  I  was 
beginning  to  get  pretty  well  in  hand. 

But  in  the  mean  time  I  kept  my  eye  on  the  female 
boarder  to  see  what  effect  I  had  produced.  First, 
she  was  a  little  stunned  at  having  her  argument 
knocked  over.  Secondly,  she  was  a  little  shocked  at 


6        THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  tremendous  character  of  the  triple  matrimonial 
suggestion.  Thirdly.  —  I  don't  like  to  say  what 
I  thought.  Something  seemed  to  have  pleased  her 
fancy.  Whether  it  was,  that,  if  trigamy  should  come 
into  fashion,  there  would  be  three  times  as  many 
chances  to  enjoy  the  luxury  of  saying,  "No!  "  is  more 
than  I  can  tell  you.  I  may  as  well  mention  that  B. 
F.  came  to  me  after  breakfast  to  borrow  the  pamphlet 
for  "a  lady,"  —  one  of  the  boarders,  he  said,  — look 
ing  as  if  he  had  a  secret  he  wished  to  be  relieved  of. 

—  I  continued.  —  If  a  human  soul  is  necessarily 
to  be  trained  up  in  the  faith  of  those  from  whom  it 
inherits  its  body,  why,  there  is  the  end  of  all  reason. 
If,  sooner  or  later,  every  soul  is  to  look  for  truth  with 
its  own  eyes,  the  first  thing  is  to  recognize  that  no 
presumption  in  favor  of  any  particular  belief  arises 
from  the  fact  of  our  inheriting  it.     Otherwise  you 
would  not  give  the  Mahometan  a  fair  chance  to  be 
come  a  convert  to  a  better  religion. 

The  second  thing  would  be  to  depolarize  every  fixed 
religious  idea  in  the  mind  by  changing  the  word  which 
stands  for  it. 

—  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  by  "depolarizing" 
an  idea,  —  said  the  divinity-student. 

I  will  tell  you,  —  I  said.  —  When  a  given  symbol 
which  represents  a  thought  has  lain  for  a  certain 
length  of  time  in  the  mind,  it  undergoes  a  change  like 
that  which  rest  in  a  certain  position  gives  to  iron.  It 
becomes  magnetic  in  its  relations,  —  it  is  traversed  by 
strange  forces  which  did  not  belong  to  it.  The  word, 
and  consequently  the  idea  it  represents,  is  polarized. 

The  religious  currency  of  mankind,  in  thought,  in 
speech,  and  in  print,  consists  entirely  of  polarized 
words.  Borrow  one  of  these  from  another  language 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.        7 

and  religion,  and  you  will  find  it  leaves  all  its  mag 
netism  behind  it.  Take  that  famous  word,  O'm,  of 
the  Hindoo  mythology.  Even  a  priest  cannot  pro 
nounce  it  without  sin ;  and  a  holy  Pundit  would  shut 
his  ears  and  run  away  from  you  in  horror,  if  you 
should  say  it  aloud.  What  do  you  care  for  O'm?  If 
you  wanted  to  get  the  Pundit  to  look  at  his  religion 
fairly,  you  must  first  depolarize  this  and  all  similar 
words  for  him.  The  argument  for  and  against  new 
translations  of  the  Bible  really  turns  on  this.  Skep 
ticism  is  afraid  to  trust  its  truths  in  depolarized 
words,  and  so  cries  out  against  a  new  translation.  I 
think,  myself,  if  every  idea  our  Book  contains  could 
be  shelled  out  of  its  old  symbol  and  put  into  a  new, 
clean,  unmagnetic  word,  we  should  have  some  chance 
of  reading  it  as  philosophers,  or  wisdom-lovers,  ought 
to  read  it, — which  we  do  not  and  cannot  now  any 
more  than  a  Hindoo  can  read  the  "Gayatri "  as  a  fair 
man  and  lover  of  truth  should  do.  When  society  has 
once  fairly  dissolved  the  New  Testament,  which  it 
never  has  done  yet,  it  will  perhaps  crystallize  it  over 
again  in  new  forms  of  language. 

—  I  did  n't  know  you  was  a  settled  minister  over 
this  parish,  —  said  the  young  f ellDw  near  me. 

A  sermon  by  a  lay -preacher  may  be  worth  listening 
to,  —  I  replied,  calmly.  —  It  gives  the  parallax  of 
thought  and  feeling  as  they  appear  to  the  observers 
from  two  very  different  points  of  view.  If  you  wish 
to  get  the  distance  of  a  heavenly  body,  you  know  that 
you  must  take  two  observations  from  remote  points  of 
the  earth's  orbit,  — in  midsummer  and  midwinter,  for 
instance.  To  get  the  parallax  of  heavenly  truths,  you 
must  take  an  observation  from  the  position  of  the  laity 
as  well  as  of  the  clergy.  Teachers  and  students  of 


8        THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

theology  get  a  certain  look,  certain  conventional  tones 
of  voice,  a  clerical  gait,  a  professional  neckcloth,  and 
habits  of  mind  as  professional  as  their  externals. 
They  are  scholarly  men  and  read  Bacon,  and  know 
well  enough  what  the  "idols  of  the  tribe"  are.  Of 
course  they  have  their  false  gods,  as  all  men  that  fol 
low  one  exclusive  calling  are  prone  to  do. — The 
clergy  have  played  the  part  of  the  fly-wheel  in  our 
modern  civilization.  They  have  never  suffered  it  to 
stop.  They  hare  often  carried  on  its  movement,  when 
other  moving  powers  failed,  by  the  momentum  stored 
in  their  vast  body.  Sometimes,  too,  they  have  kept  it 
back  by  their  vis  inertice,  when  its  wheels  were  like  to 
grind  the  bones  of  some  old  canonized  error  into  fer 
tilizers  for  the  soil  that  yields  the  bread  of  life.  But 
the  mainspring  of  the  world's  onward  religious  move 
ment  is  not  in  them,  nor  in  any  one  body  of  men,  let 
me  tell  you.  It  is  the  people  that  makes  the  clergy, 
and  not  the  clergy  that  makes  the  people.  Of  course, 
the  profession  reacts  on  its  source  with  variable  energy. 
—  But  there  never  was  a  guild  of  dealers  or  a  com 
pany  of  craftsmen  that  did  not  need  sharp  looking 
after. 

Our  old  friend,  Dr.  Holyoke,  whom  we  gave  the 
dinner  to  some  time  since,  must  have  known  many 
people  that  saw  the  great  bonfire  in  Harvard  College 
yard. 

-Bonfire?  —  shrieked  the  little  man. — The  bon 
fire  when  Robert  Calef's  book  was  burned? 

The  same,  —  I  said,  —  when  Robert  Calef  the  Bos 
ton  merchant's  book  was  burned  in  the  yard  of  Har 
vard  College,  by  order  of  Increase  Mather,  President 
of  the  College  and  Minister  of  the  Gospel.  You 
remember  the  old  witchcraft  revival  of  '92,  and  how 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.        9 

stout  Master  Robert  Calef,  trader  of  Boston,  had  the 
pluck  to  tell  the  ministers  and  judges  what  a  set  of 
fools  and  worse  than  fools  they  were  — 

Remember  it?  —  said  the  little  man. — I  don't 
think  I  shall  forget  it,  as  long  as  I  can  stretch  this 
forefinger  to  point  with,  and  see  what  it  wears.  — 
There  was  a  ring  on  it. 

May  I  look  at  it?  —  I  said. 

Where  it  is,  —  said  the  little  man ;  —  it  will  never 
come  off,  till  it  falls  off  from  the  bone  in  the  darkness 
and  in  the  dust. 

He  pushed  the  high  chair  on  which  he  sat  slightly 
back  from  the  table,  and  dropped  himself,  standing, 
to  the  floor,  —  his  head  being  only  a  little  above  the 
level  of  the  table,  as  he  stood.  With  pain  and  labor, 
lifting  one  foot  over  the  other,  as  a  drummer  handles 
his  sticks,  he  took  a  few  steps  from  his  place,  —  his 
motions  and  the  deadbeat  of  the  misshapen  boots 
announcing  to  my  practised  eye  and  ear  the  malfor 
mation  which  is  called  in  learned  language  talipes 
varus,  or  inverted  club-foot. 

Stop !  stop !  —  I  said,  —  let  me  come  to  you. 

The  little  man  hobbled  back,  and  lifted  himself  by 
the  left  arm,  with  an  ease  approaching  to  grace  which 
surprised  me,  into  his  high  chair.  I  walked  to  his 
side,  and  he  stretched  out  the  forefinger  of  his  right 
hand,  with  the  ring  upon  it.  The  ring  had  been  put 
on  long  ago,  and  could  not  pass  the  misshapen  joint. 
It  was  one  of  those  funeral  rings  which  used  to  be 
given  to  relatives  and  friends  after  the  decease  of 
persons  of  any  note  or  importance.  Beneath  a  round 
bit  of  glass  was  a  death's  head.  Engraved  on  one 
side  of  this,  "L.  B.  ^Et.  22,"  — on  the  other,  "Ob. 
1692." 


10     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

My  grandmother's  grandmother, — said  the  little 
man.  —  Hanged  for  a  witch.  It  does  n't  seem  a  great 
while  ago.  I  knew  my  grandmother,  and  loved  her. 
Her  mother  was  daughter  to  the  witch  that  Chief 
Justice  Sewall  hanged  and  Cotton  Mather  delivered 
over  to  the  Devil. — That  was  Salem,  though,  and  not 
Boston.  No,  not  Boston.  Robert  Calef,  the  Boston 
merchant,  it  was  that  blew  them  all  to  — 

Never  mind  where  he  blew  them  to,  —  I  said ;  — 
for  the  little  man  was  getting  red  in  the  face,  and  I 
did  n't  know  what  might  come  next. 

This  episode  broke  me  up,  as  the  jockeys  say,  out 
of  my  square  conversational  trot;  but  I  settled  down 
to  it  again. 

—  A  man  that  knows  men,  in  the  street,  at  their 
work,  human  nature  in  its  shirt-sleeves,  who  makes 
bargains  with  deacons,  instead  of  talking  over  texts 
with  them,  a  man  who  has  found  out  that  there  are 
plenty  of  praying  rogues  and  swearing  saints  in  the 
world,  —  above  all,  ^ho  has  found  out,  by  living  into 
the  pith  and  core  of  life,  that  all  of  the  Deity  which 
can  be  folded  up  between  the  sheets  of  any  human 
book  is  to  the  Deity  of  the  firmament,  of  the  strata, 
of  the  hot  aortic  flood,  of  throbbing  human  life,  of 
this  infinite,  instantaneous  consciousness  in  which  the 
soul's  being  consists, — an  incandescent  point  in  the 
filament  connecting  the  negative  pole  of  a  past  eter 
nity  with  the  positive  pole  of  an  eternity  that  is  to 
come,  —  that  all  of  the  Deity  which  any  human  book 
can  hold  is  to  this  larger  Deity  of  the  working  battery 
of  the  universe  only  as  the  films  in  a  book  of  gold-leaf 
are  to  the  broad  seams  and  curdled  lumps  of  ore  that 
lie  in  unsunned  mines  and  virgin  placers,  —  Oh !  —  I 
was  saying  that  a  man  who  lives  out-of-doors,  among 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      11 

live  people,  gets  some  things  into  his  head  he  might 
not  find  in  the  index  of  his  "Body  of  Divinity." 

I  tell  you  what,  — the  idea  of  the  professions'  dig 
ging  a  moat  round  their  close  corporations,  like  that 
Japanese  one  at  Jeddo,  on  the  bottom  of  which,  if 
travellers  do  not  lie,  you  could  put  Park  Street 
Church  and  look  over  the  vane  from  its  side,  and  try 
to  stretch  another  such  spire  across  it  without  span 
ning  the  chasm,  —  that  idea,  I  say,  is  pretty  nearly 
worn  out.  Now  when  a  civilization  or  a  civilized  cus 
tom  falls  into  senile  dementia,  there  is  commonly  a 
judgment  ripe  for  it,  and  it  comes  as  plague's  come, 
from  a  breath,  —  as  fires  come,  from  a  spark. 

Here,  look  at  medicine.  Big  wigs,  gold-headed 
canes,  Latin  prescriptions,  shops  full  of  abominations, 
recipes  a  yard  long,  "curing"  patients  by  drugging 
as  sailors  bring  a  wind  by  whistling,  selling  lies  at  a 
guinea  apiece,  —  a  routine,  in  short,  of  giving  unfor 
tunate  sick  people  a  mess  of  things  either  too  odious 
to  swallow  or  too  acrid  to  hold,  or,  if  that  were  possi 
ble,  both  at  once. 

—  You  don't  know  what  I  mean,  indignant  and  not 
unintelligent  country-practitioner?  Then  you  don't 
know  the  history  of  medicine,  —  and  that  is  not  my 
fault.  But  don't  expose  yourself  in  any  outbreak  of 
eloquence;  for,  by  the  mortar  in  which  Anaxarchus 
was  pounded !  I  did  not  bring  home  Schenckius  and 
Forestus  and  Hildanus,  and  all  the  old  folios  in  calf 
and  vellum  I  will  show  you,  to  be  bullied  by  the  pro 
prietor  of  a  "Wood  and  Bache,"  and  a  shelf  of  pep 
pered  sheepskin  reprints  by  Philadelphia  Editors. 
Besides,  many  of  the  profession  and  I  know  a  little 
something  of  each  other,  and  you  don't  think  I  am 
such  a  simpleton  as  to  lose  their  good  opinion  by  say- 


12     THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing  what  the  better  heads  among  them  would  condemn 
as  unfair  and  untrue?  Now  mark  how  the  great 
plague  came  on  the  generation  of  drugging  doctors, 
and  in  what  form  it  fell. 

A  scheming  drug- vender,  (inventive  genius,)  an  ut 
terly  untrustworthy  and  incompetent  observer,  (pro 
found  searcher  of  Nature.)  a  shallow  dabbler  in  eru 
dition,  (sagacious  scholar,)  started  the  monstrous 
fiction  (founded  the  immortal  system)  of  Homoeopathy. 
I  am  veiy  fair,  you  see, — you  can  help  yourself  to 
either  of  these  sets  of  phrases. 

All  the  reason  in  the  world  would  not  have  had  so 
rapid  and  general  an  effect  on  the  public  mind  to 
disabuse  it  of  the  idea  that  a  drug  is  a  good  thing  in 
itself,  instead  of  being,  as  it  is,  a  bad  thing,  as  was 
produced  by  the  trick  (system)  of  this  German  char 
latan  (theorist).  Not  that  the  wiser  part  of  the  pro 
fession  needed  him  to  teach  them;  but  the  routinists 
and  their  employers,  the  "general  practitioners," 
who  lived  by  selling  pills  and  mixtures,  and  their 
drug-consuming  customers,  had  to  recognize  that  peo 
ple  could  get  well,  unpoisoned.  These  dumb  cattle 
would  not  learn  it  ofc  themselves,  and  so  the  murrain 
of  Homoeopathy  fell  on  them. 

—  You  don't  know  what  plague  has  fallen  on  the 
practitioners  of  theology?  I  will  tell  you,  then.  It 
is  Spiritualism.  While  some  are  crying  out  against 
it  as  a  delusion  of  the  Devil,  and  some  are  laughing 
at  it  as  an  hysteric  folly,  and  some  are  getting  angry 
with  it  as  a  mere  trick  of  interested  or  mischievous 
persons,  Spiritualism  is  quietly  undermining  the  tra 
ditional  ideas  of  the  future  state  which  have  been  and 
are  still  accepted,  —  not  merely  in  those  who  believe 
in  it,  but  in  the  general  sentiment  of  the  community, 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      13 

to  a  larger  extent  than  most  good  people  seem  to  be 
aware  of.  It  need  n't  be  true,  to  do  this,  any  more 
than  Homoaopathy  need,  to  do  its  work.  The  Spirit 
ualists  have  some  pretty  strong  instincts  to  pry  over, 
which  no  doubt  have  been  roughly  handled  by  theolo 
gians  at  different  times.  And  the  Nemesis  of  the  pul 
pit  comes,  in  a  shape  it  little  thought  of,  beginning 
with  the  snap  of  a  toe- joint,  and  ending  with  such  a 
crack  of  old  beliefs  that  the  roar  of  it  is  heard  in  all 
the  ministers'  studies  of  Christendom !  Sir,  you  can 
not  have  people  of  cultivation,  of  pure"  character,  sen 
sible  enough  in  common  things,  large-hearted  women, 
grave  judges,  shrewd  business-men,  men  of  science, 
professing  to  be  in  communication  with  the  spiritual 
world  and  keeping  up  constant  intercourse  with  it, 
without  its  gradually  reacting  on  the  whole  conception 
of  that  other  life.  It  is  the  folly  of  the  world,  con 
stantly,  which  confounds  its  wisdom.  Not  only  out 
of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings,  but  out  of  the 
mouths  of  fools  and  cheats,  we  may  often  get  our  tru 
est  lessons.  For  the  fool's  judgment  is  a  dog- vane 
that  turns  with  a  breath,  and  the  cheat  watches  the 
clouds  and  sets  his  weathercock  by  them,  —  so  that 
one  shall  often  see  by  their  pointing  which  way  the 
winds  of  heaven  are  blowing,  when  the  slow-wheeling 
arrows  and  feathers  of  what  we  call  the  Temples  of 
Wisdom  are  turning  to  all  points  of  the  compass. 

—  Amen!  —  said  the  young  fellow  called  John  — 
Ten  minutes  by  the  watch.  Those  that  are  unani 
mous  will  please  to  signify  by  holding  up  their  left 
foot! 

I  looked  this  young  man  steadily  in  the  face  for 
about  thirty  seconds.  His  countenance  was  as  calm 
as  that  of  a  reposing  infant.  I  think  it  was  simpli- 


14      THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

city,  rather  than  mischief,  with  perhaps  a  youthful 
playfulness,  that  led  him  to  this  outbreak.  I  have 
often  noticed  that  even  quiet  horses,  on  a  sharp  No 
vember  morning,  when  their  coats  are  beginning  to 
get  the  winter  roughness,  will  give  little  sportive  denii- 
kicks,  with  slight  sudden  elevation  of  the  subsequent 
region  of  the  body,  and  a  sharp  short  whinny, — by  no 
means  intending  to  put  their  heels  through  the  dasher, 
or  to  address  the  driver  rudely,  but  feeling,  to  use  a 
familiar  word,  frisky.  This,  I  think,  is  the  physiolo 
gical  condition  of  the  young  person,  John.  I  noticed, 
however,  what  I  should  call  a  palpebral  spasm,  affect 
ing  the  eyelid  and  muscles  of  one  side,  which,  if  it 
were  intended  for  the  facial  gesture  called  a  wink, 
might  lead  me  to  suspect  a  disposition  to  be  satirical 
on  his  part. 

—  Resuming  the  conversation,  I  remarked,  —  I 
am,  ex  offitio,  as  a  Professor,  a  conservative.  For  I 
don't  know  any  fruit  that  clings  to  its  tree  so  faith 
fully,  not  even  a  "froze-'n'-thaw"  winter-apple,  as  a 
Professor  to  the  bough  of  which  his  chair  is  made. 
You  can't  shake  him  off,  and  it  is  as  much  as  you  can 
do  to  pull  him  off.  Hence,  by  a  chain  of  induction  I 
need  not  unwind,  he  tends  to  conservatism  generally. 

But  then,  you  know,  if  you  are  sailing  the  Atlantic, 
and  all  at  once  find  yourself  in  a  current,  and  the  sea 
covered  with  weeds,  and  drop  your  Fahrenheit  over 
the  side  and  find  it  eight  or  ten  degrees  higher  than 
in  the  ocean  generally,  there  is  no  use  in  flying  in  the 
face  of  facts  and  swearing  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
Gulf -Stream,  when  you  are  in  it. 

You  can't  keep  gas  in  a  bladder,  and  you  can't 
keep  knowledge  tight  in  a  profession.  Hydrogen  will 
leak  out,  and  air  will  leak  in,  through  India-rubber; 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      15 

and  special  knowledge  will  leak  out,  and  general 
knowledge  will  leak  in,  though  a  profession  were  cov 
ered  with  twenty  thicknesses  of  sheepskin  diplomas. 
By  Jove,  Sir,  till  common  sense  is  well  mixed  up 
with  medicine,  and  common  manhood  with  theology, 
and  common  honesty  with  law,  We  the  people,  Sir, 
some  of  us  with  nut-crackers,  and  some  of  us  with 
trip-hammers,  and  some  of  us  with  pile-drivers,  and 
some  of  us  coming  with  a  whish !  like  air-stones  out 
of  a  lunar  volcano,  will  crash  down  on  the  lumps  of 
nonsense  in  all  of  them  till  we  have  made  powder  of 
them  like  Aaron's  calf  ! 

If  to  be  a  conservative  is  to  let  all  the  drains  of 
thought  choke  up  and  keep  all  the  soul's  windows 
down,  —  to  shut  out  the  sun  from  the  east  and  the 
wind  from  the  west,  —  to  let  the  rats  run  free  in  the 
cellar,  and  the  moths  feed  their  fill  in  the  chambers, 
and  the  spiders  weave  their  lace  before  the  mirrors, 
till  the  soul's  typhus  is  bred  out  of  our  neglect,  and 
we  begin  to  snore  in  its  coma  or  rave  in  its  delirium, 
—  I,  Sir,  am  a  bonnet-rouge,  a  red  cap  of  the  barri 
cades,  my  friends,  rather  than  a  conservative. 

—  Were  you  born  in  Boston,  Sir?  —  said  the  little 
man,  —  looking  eager  and  excited. 

I  was  not,  —  I  replied. 

It 's  a  pity,  —  it 's  a  pity,  —  said  the  little  man ;  — 
it 's  the  place  to  be  born  in.  But  if  you  can't  fix  it 
so  as  to  be  born  here,  you  can  come  and  live  here. 
Old  Ben  Franklin,  the  father  of  American  science 
and  the  American  Union,  was  n't  ashamed  to  be  born 
here.  Jim  Otis,  the  father  of  American  Indepen 
dence,  bothered  about  in  the  Cape  Cod  marshes 
awhile,  but  he  came  to  Boston  as  soon  as  he  got  big 
enough.  Joe  Warren,  the  first  bloody  ruffled-shirt  of 


16     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  Revolution,  was  as  good  as  born  here.  Parson 
Channing  strolled  along  this  way  from  Newport,  and 
stayed  here.  Pity  old  Sam  Hopkins  hadn't  come, 

too; we  'd  have  made  a  man  of  him,  — poor,  dear, 

good  old  Christian  heathen !  There  he  lies,  as  peace 
ful  as  a  young  baby,  in  the  eld  burying-ground !  I  've 
stood  on  the  slab  many  a  time.  Meant  well,  —  meant 
well.  Juggernaut.  Parson  Channing  put  a  little 
oil  on  one  linchpin,  and  slipped  it  out  so  softly,  the 
first  thing  they  knew  about  it  was  the  wheel  of  that 
side  was  down.  T'  other  fellow  's  at  work  now,  but 
he  makes  more  noise  about  it.  When  the  linchpin 
comes  out  on  his  side,  there  '11  be  a  jerk,  I  tell  you! 
Some  think  it  will  spoil  the  old  cart,  and  they  pretend 
to  say  that  there  are  valuable  things  in  it  which  may 
get  hurt.  Hope  not,  —  hope  not.  But  this  is  the 
great  Macadamizing  place, — always  cracking  up 
something. 

Cracking  up  Boston  folks,  —  said  the  gentleman 
with  the  diamond-pin,  whom,  for  convenience'  sake, 
I  shall  hereafter  call  the  Koh-i-noor. 

The  little  man  turned  round  mechanically  towards 
him,  as  Maelzel's  Turk  used  to  turn,  carrying  his 
head  slowly  and  horizontally,  as  if  it  went  by  cog 
wheels.  —  Cracking  up  all  sorts  of  things,  —  native 
and  foreign  vermin  included,  —  said  the  little  man. 

This  remark  was  thought  by  some  of  us  to  have  a 
hidden  personal  application,  and  to  afford  a  fair  open 
ing  for  a  lively  rejoinder,  if  the  Koh-i-noor  had  been 
so  disposed.  The  little  man  uttered  it  with  the  dis 
tinct  wooden  calmness  with  which  the  ingenious  Turk 
used  to  exclaim,  JE-chec !  so  that  it  must  have  been 
heard.  The  party  supposed  to  be  interested  in  the 
remark  was,  however,  carrying  a  large  knife-blade- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      17 

ful  of  something  to  his  mouth  just  then,  which,  no 
doubt,  interfered  with  the  reply  he  would  have  made. 
—  My  friend  who  used  to  board  here  was  accus 
tomed  sometimes,  in  a  pleasant  way,  to  call  himself 
the  Autocrat  of  the  table,  — meaning,  I  suppose,  that 
he  had  it  all  his  own  way  among  the  boarders.  I 
think  cur  small  boarder  here  is  like  to  prove  a  refrac 
tory  subject,  if  I  undertake  to  use  the  sceptre  my 
friend  meant  to  bequeath  me,  too  magisterially.  I 
won't  deny  that  sometimes,  on  rare  occasions,  when  I 
have  been  in  company  with  gentlemen  who  preferred 
listening,  I  have  been  guilty  of  the  same  iiind  of  usur 
pation  which  my  friend  openly  justified.  But  I  main 
tain,  that  I,  the  Professor,  am  a  good  listener.  If  a 
man  can  tell  me  a  fact  which  subtends  an  appreciable 
angle  in  the  horizon  of  thought,  I  am  as  receptive  as 
the  contribution-box  in  a  congregation  of  colored 
brethren.  If,  when  I  am  exposing  my  intellectual 
dry -goods,  a  man  will  begin  a  good  story,  I  will  have 
them  all  in,  and  my  shutters  up,  before  he  has  got  to 
the  fifth  "says  he,"  and  listen  like  a  three-years'  child, 
as  the  author  of  the  "Old  Sailor  "  says.  I  had  rather 
hear  one  of  those  grand  elemental  laughs  from  either 
of  our  two  Georges,  (fictitious  names,  Sir  or  Madam,) 
or  listen  to  one  of  those  old  playbills  of  our  College 
days,  in  which  "Tom  and  Jerry"  ("Thomas  and  Jer 
emiah,"  as  the  old  Greek  Professor  was  said  to  call 
it,)  was  announced  to  be  brought  on  the  stage  with 
the  whole  force  of  the  Faculty,  read  by  our  Frederick, 
(no  suchperso.a,  of  course,)  than  say  the  best  things  I 
might  by  any  chance  find  myself  capable  of  saying. 
Of  ccurse,  if  I  come  across  a  real  thinker,  a  sugges 
tive,  acute,  illuminating,  informing  talker,  I  enjoy  the 
luxury  of  sitting  still  for  a  while  as  much  as  another. 


18     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Nobody  talks  much  that  does  n't  say  unwise  things, 

—  things  he  did  not  mean  to  say;  as  no  person  plays 
much  without  striking  a  false  note  sometimes.     Talk, 
to  me,  is  only  spading  up  the  ground  for  crops  of 
thought.     I  can't  answer  for  what  will  turn  up.     If 
I  could,  it  wouldn't  be  talking,  but  "speaking  my 
piece."     Better,  I  think,  the  hearty  abandonment  of 
one's  self  to  the  suggestions  of  the  moment  at  the  risk 
of  an  occasional  slip  of  the  tongue,  perceived  the  in 
stant  it  escapes,  but  just  one  syllable  too  late,  than  the 
royal  reputation  of  never  saying  a  foolish  thing. 

—  What  shall  I  do  with  this  little  man?  —  There 
is  only  one  thing  to  do,  —  and  that  is  to  let  him  talk 
when  he  will.  The  day  of  the  "Autocrat's"  mono 
logues  is  over. 

-  My  friend,  —  said  I  to  the  young  fellow  whom, 
as  1  have  said,  the  boarders  ,call  "John,"  —My  friend, 

—  I  said,  one  morning,  after  breakfast,  —  can  you  give 
me  any  information  respecting  the  deformed  person 
who  sits  at  the  other  end  of  the  table? 

What!  the  Sculpin?  —  said  the  young  fellow. 

The  diminutive  person,  with  angular  curvature  of 
the  spine,  —  I  said,  —  and  double  talipes  varus,  —  I 
beg  your  pardon,  —  with  two  club-feet. 

Is  that  long  word  what  you  call  it  when  a  fellah 
walks  so  ?  —  said  the  young  man,  making  his  fists  re 
volve  round  an  imaginary  axis,  as  you  may  have  seen 
youth  of  tender  age  and  limited  pugilistic  knowledge, 
when  they  show  how  they  would  punish  an  adversary, 
themselves  protected  by  this  rotating  guard,  —  the 
middle  knuckle,  meantime,  thumb-supported,  fiercely 
prominent,  death-threatening. 

It  is,  —  said  I.  —  But  would  you  have  the  kindness 
to  tell  me  if  you  know  anything  about  this  deformed 
person? 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      19 

About  the  Sculpin  ?  —  said  the  young  fellow. 

My  good  friend,  —  said  I,  —  I  am  sure,  by  your 
countenance,  you  would  not  hurt  the  feelings  of  one 
who  has  been  hardly  enough  treated  by  Nature  to  be 
spared  by  his  fellows.  Even  in  speaking  of  him  to 
others,  I  could  wish  that  you  might  not  employ  a  term 
which  implies  contempt  for  what  should  inspire  only 
pity. 

A  fellah  's  no  business  to  be  so crooked,  —  said 

the  young  man  called  John. 

Yes,  yes,  —  I  said,  thoughtfully,  —  the  strong  hate 
the  weak.  It  's  all  right.  The  arrangement  has 
reference  to  the  race,  and  not  to  the  individual.  In 
firmity  must  be  kicked  out,  or  the  stock  run  down. 
Wholesale  moral  arrangements  are  so  different  from 
retail !  —  I  understand  the  instinct,  my  friend,  —  it  is 
cosmic,  —  it  is  planetary,  —  it  is  a  conservative  prin 
ciple  in  creation. 

The  young  fellow's  face  gradually  lost  its  expres 
sion  as  I  was  speaking,  until  it  became  as  blank  of 
vivid  significance  as  the  countenance  of  a  gingerbread 
rabbit  with  two  currants  in  the  place  of  eyes.  He 
had  not  taken  my  meaning. 

Presently  the  intelligence  came  back  with  a  snap 
that  made  him  wink,  as  he  answered,  — Jest  so.  All 
right.  A  1.  Put  her  through.  That 's  the  way  to 
talk.  Did  you  speak  tome,  Sir?  —  Here  the  young 
man  struck  up  that  well-known  song  which  I  think 
they  used  to  sing  at  Masonic  festivals,  beginning, 
"Aldiborontiphoscophornio,  Where  left  you  Chro- 
nonhotonthologos?  " 

I  beg  your  pardon,  —  I  said;  —  all  I  meant  was, 
that  men,  as  temporary  occupants  of  a  permanent 
abode  called  human  life,  which  is  improved  or  injured 


20      THE    PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

by  occupancy,  according  to  the  style  of  tenant,  have 
a  natural  dislike  to  those  who,  if  they  live  the  life  of 
the  race  as  well  as  of  the  individual,  will  leave  lasting 
injurious  effects  upon  the  abode  spoken  of,  which  is 
to  be  occupied  by  countless  future  generations.  This 
is  the  final  cause  of  the  underlying  brute  instinct 
which  we  have  in  common  with  the  herds. 

—  The  gingerbread-rabbit  expression  was  coming 
on  so  fast,  that  I  thought  I  must  try  again.  —  It 's  a 
pity  that  families  are  kept  up,  where  there  are  such 
hereditary  infirmities.  Still,  let  us  treat  this  poor 
man  fairly,  and  not  call  him  names.  Do  you  know 
what  his  name  is? 

I  know  what  the  rest  of  'em  call  him,  —  said  the 
young  fellow.  —  They  call  him  Little  Boston. 
There  's  no  harm  in  that,  is  there? 

It  is  an  honorable  term,  —  I  replied.  —  But  why 
Little  Boston,  in  a  place  where  most  are  Bostonians? 

Because  nobody  else  is  quite  so  Boston  all  over  as 
he  is,  —  said  the  young  fellow. 

"L.  B.  Ob.  1692."  — Little  Boston  let  him  be, 
when  we  talk  about  him.  The  ring  he  wears  labels 
him  well  enough.  There  is  stuff  in  the  little  man,  or 
he  would  n't  stick  so  manfully  by  this  crooked,  crotch 
ety  old  town.  Give  him  a  chance.  —  You  will  drop 
the  Sculpin,  won't  you?  —  I  said  to  the  young  fellow. 

Drop  him?  —  he  answered,  — I  ha'n't  took  him  up 
yet. 

No,  no,  — the  term,  — I  said,  — the  term.  Don't 
call  him  so  any  more,  if  you  please.  Call  him  Little 
Boston,  if  you  like. 

All  right,  —  said  the  young  fellow.  —  I  would  n't  be 
hard  on  the  poor  little 

The  word  he  used  was  objectionable  in  point  of  sig- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     21 

nificance  and  of  grammar.  It  was  a  frequent  termina 
tion  of  certain  adjectives  among  the  Romans,  —  as  of 
those  designating  a  person  following  the  sea,  or  given 
to  rural  pursuits.  It  is  classed  by  custom  among  the 
profane  words ;  why,  it  is  hard  to  say,  —  but  it  is 
largely  used  in  the  street  by  those  who  speak  of  their 
fellows  in  pity  or  in  wrath. 

I  never  heard  the  young  fellow  apply  the  name  of 
the  odious  pretended  fish  to  the  little  man  from  that 
day  forward. 

—  Here  we  are,  then,  at  our  boarding  -  house. 
First,  myself,  the  Professor,  a  little  way  from  the 
head  of  the  table,  on  the  right,  looking  down,  where 
the  "Autocrat"  used  to  sit.  At  the  further  end  sits 
the  Landlady.  At  the  head  of  the  table,  just  now,  the 
Koh-i-noor,  or  the  gentleman  with  the  diamond.  Op 
posite  me  is  a  Venerable  Gentleman  with  a  bland  coun 
tenance,  who  as  yet  has  spoken  little.  The  Divinity 
Student  is  my  neighbor  on  the  right,  —  and  further 
down,  that  Young  Fellow  of  whom  I  have  repeatedly 
spoken.  The  Landlady's  Daughter  sits  near  the 
Koh-i-noor,  as  I  said.  The  Poor  Relation  near  the 
Landlady.  At  the  right  upper  corner  is  a  fresh-look 
ing  youth  of  whose  name  and  history  I  have  as  yet 
learned  nothing.  Next  the  further  left-hand  corner, 
near  the  lower  end  of  the  table,  sits  the  deformed  per 
son.  The  chair  at  his  side,  occupying  that  corner, 
is  empty.  I  need  not  specially  mention  the  other 
•boarders,  with  the  exception  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
the  landlady's  son,  who  sits  near  his  mother.  We  are 
a  tolerably  assorted  set,  —  difference  enough  and  like 
ness  enough ;  but  still  it  seems  to  me  there  is  some 
thing  wanting.  The  Landlady's  Daughter  is  the 
prima  donna  in  the  way  of  feminine  attractions.  I 


22     THE   PROFESSOK   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

am  not  quite  satisfied  with  this  young  lady.  Sh6 
wears  more  "jewelry,"  as  certain  young  ladies  call 
their  trinkets,  than  I  care  to  see  on  a  person  in  her 
position.  Her  voice  is  strident,  her  laugh  too  much 
like  a  giggle,  and  she  has  that  foolish  way  of  dancing 
and  bobbing  like  a  quill-float  with  a  "minnum"  biting" 
the  hook  below  it,  which  one  sees  and  weeps  over 
sometimes  in  persons  of  more  pretensions.  I  can't 
help  hoping  we  shall  put  something  into  that  empty 
chair  yet  which  will  add  the  missing  string  to  our 
social  harp.  I  hear  talk  of  a  rare  Miss  who  is  ex 
pected.  Something  in  the  schoolgirl  way,  I  believe. 
We  shall  see. 

-  My  friend  who  calls  himself  The  Autocrat  has 
given  me  a  caution  which  I  am  going  to  repeat,  with 
my  comment  upon  it,  for  the  benefit  of  all  concerned. 

Professor,  —  said  he,  one  day,  —  don't  you  think 
your  brain  will  run  dry  before  a  year  's  out,  if  you 
don't  get  the  pump  to  help  the  cow?  Let  me  tell  you 
what  happened  to  me  once.  I  put  a  little  money  into 
a  bank,  and  bought  a  check-book,  so  that  I  might 
draw  it  as  I  wanted,  in  sums  to  suit.  Things  went  on 
nicely  for  a  time ;  scratching  with  a  pen  was  as  easy 
as  rubbing  Aladdin's  Lamp ;  and  my  blank  check-book 
seemed  to  be  a  dictionary  of  possibilities,  in  which  I 
could  find  all  the  synonymes  of  happiness,  and  realize 
any  one  of  them  on  the  spot.  A  check  came  back  to 
me  at  last  with  these  two  words  on  it, — No  funds. 
My  check-book  was  a  volume  of  waste-paper. 

Now,  Professor, — said  he, — I  have  drawn  some 
thing  out  of  your  bank,  you  know ;  and  just  so  sure 
as  you  keep  drawing  out  your  soul's  currency  without 
making  new  deposits,  the  next  thing  will  be,  No 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     23 

funds,  — and  then  where  will  you  be,  my  boy?  These 
little  bits  of  paper  mean  your  gold  and  your  silver  and 
your  copper,  Professor ;  and  you  will  certainly  break 
up  and  go  to  pieces,  if  you  don't  hold  on  to  your  me 
tallic  basis. 

There  is  something  in  that,  —  said  I.  —  Only  I 
rather  think  life  can  coin  thought  somewhat  faster 
than  I  can  count  it  off  in  words.  What  if  one  shall 
go  round  and  dry  up  with  soft  napkins  all  the  dew 
that  falls  of  a  June  evening  on  the  leaves  of  his  gar 
den?  Shall  there  be  no  more  dew  on  those  leaves 
thereafter?  Marry,  yea, — many  drops,  large  and 
round  and  full  of  moonlight  as  those  thou  shalt  have 
absterged ! 

Here  am  I,  the  Professor,  —  a  man  who  has  lived 
long  enough  to  have  plucked  the  flowers  of  life  and 
come  to  the  berries,  —  which  are  not  always  sad-col 
ored,  but  sometimes  golden-hued  as  the  crocus  of 
April,  or  rosy-cheeked  as  the  damask  of  June ;  a  man 
who  staggered  against  books  as  a  baby,  and  will  totter 
against  them,  if  he  lives  to  decrepitude ;  with  a  brain 
as  full  of  tingling  thoughts,  such  as  they  are,  as  a 
limb  which  we  call  "asleep,"  because  it  is  so  particu 
larly  awake,  is  of  pricking  points ;  presenting  a  key 
board  of  nerve-pulps,  not  as  yet  tanned  or  ossified,  to 
the  finger-touch  of  all  outward  agencies;  knowing 
something  of  the  filmy  threads  of  this  web  of  life  in 
which  we  insects  buzz  awhile,  waiting  for  the  gray  old 
spider  to  come  along;  contented  enough  with  daily 
realities,  but  twirling  on  his  finger  the  key  of  a  pri 
vate  Bedlam  of  ideals ;  in  knowledge  feeding  with  the 
fox  of tener  than  with  the  stork,  —  loving  better  the 
breadth  of  a  fertilizing  inundation  than  the  depth  of 
a  narrow  artesian  well ;  finding  nothing  too  small  for 


24     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

his  contemplation  in  the  markings  of  the  grammato- 
phora  subtilissima,  and  nothing  too  large  in  the  move 
ment  of  the  solar  system  towards  the  star  Lambda  of 
the  constellation  Hercules ;  —  and  the  question  is, 
whether  there  is  anything  left  for  me,  the  Professor, 
to  suck  out  of  creation,  after  my  lively  friend  has  had 
his  straw  in  the  bung-hole  of  the  Universe ! 

A  man's  mental  reactions  with  the  atmosphere  of 
life  must  go  on,  whether  he  will  or  no,  as  between  his 
blood  and  the  air  he  breathes.  As  to  catching  the  re 
siduum  of  the  process,  or  what  we  call  thought,  —  the 
gaseous  ashes  of  burned-out  thinking,  —  the  excretion 
of  mental  respiration,  —  that  will  depend  on  many 
things,  as,  on  having  a  favorable  intellectual  tempera 
ture  about  one,  and  a  fitting  receptacle.  —  I  sow  more 
thought-seeds  in  twenty-four  hours'  travel  over  the 
desert-sand  along  which  my  lonely  consciousness  paces 
day  and  night,  than  I  shall  throw  into  soil  where  it 
will  germinate,  in  a  year.  All  sorts  of  bodily  and 
mental  perturbations  come  between  us  and  the  due 
projection  of  our  thought.  The  pulse-like  "fits  of 
easy  and  difficult  transmission  "  seem  to  reach  even 
the  transparent  medium  through  which  our  souls  are 
seen.  We  know  our  humanity  by  its  often  inter 
cepted  rays,  as  we  tell  a  revolving  light  from  a  star 
or  meteor  by  its  constantly  recurring  obscuration. 

An  illustrious  scholar  once  told  me,  that,  in  the  first 
lecture  he  ever  delivered,  he  spoke  but  half  his  allotted 
time,  and  felt  as  if  he  had  told  all  he  knew.  Braham 
came  forward  once  to  sing  one  of  his  most  famous  and 
familiar  songs,  and  for  his  life  could  not  recall  the 
first  line  of  it ;  —  he  told  his  mishap  to  the  audience, 
and  they  screamed  it  at  him  in  a  chorus  of  a  thousand 
voices.  Milton  could  not  write  to  suit  himself,  except 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      25 

from  the  autumnal  to  the  vernal  equinox.  One  in  the 
clothing-business,  who,  there  is  reason  to  suspect,  may 
have  inherited,  by  descent,  the  great  poet's  impressi 
ble  temperament,  let  a  customer  slip  through  his  fin 
gers  one  day  without  fitting  him  with  a  new  garment. 
"Ah!  "  said  he  to  a  friend  of  mine,  who  was  standing 
by,  "  if  it  had  n't  been  for  that  confounded  headache 
of  mine  this  morning,  I  'd  have  had  a  coat  on  that 
man,,  in  spite  of  himself,  before  he  left  the  store." 
A  passing  throb,  only,  —  but  it  deranged  the  nice 
mechanism  required  to  persuade  the  accidental  hu 
man  being,  «,  into  a  given  piece  of  broadcloth,  a. 

We  must  taka  care  not  to  confound  this  frequent 
difficulty  of  transmission  of  our  ideas  with  want  of 
ideas.  I  suppose  that  a  man's  mind  does  in  time 
form  a  neutral  salt  with  the  elements  in  the  universe 
for  which  it  has  special  elective  affinities.  In  fact,  I 
look  upon  a  library  as  a  kind  of  mental  chemist's 
shop,  filled  with  the  crystals  of  all  forms  and  hues 
which  have  come  from  the  union  of  individual  thought 
with  local  circumstances  or  universal  principles. 

When  a  man  has  worked  out  his  special  affinities 
in  this  way,  there  is  an  end  of  his  genius  as  a  real 
solvent.  No  more  effervescence  and  hissing  tumult 
as  he  pours  his  sharp  thought  on  the  world's  biting 
alkaline  unbeliefs!  No  more  corrosion  of  the  old 
monumental  tablets  covered  with  lies!  No  more 
taking  up  of  dull  earths,  and  turning  them,  first  into 
clear  solutions,  and  then  into  lustrous  prisms ! 

I,  the  Professor,  am  very  much  like  other  men.  I 
shall  not  find  out  when  I  have  used  up  my  affinities. 
What  a  blessed  thing  it  is,  that  Nature,  when  she  in 
vented,  manufactured,  and  patented  her  authors,  con 
trived  to  make  critics  out  of  the  chips  that  were  left  I 


26     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Painful  as  the  task  is,  they  never  fail  to  warn  the 
author,  in  the  most  impressive  manner,  of  the  proba 
bilities  of  failure  in  what  he  has  undertaken.  Sad 
as  the  necessity  is  to  their  delicate  sensibilities,  they 
never  hesitate  to  advertise  him  of  the  decline  of  his 
powers,  and  to  press  upon  him  the  propriety  of  retir 
ing  before  he  sinks  into  imbecility.  Trusting  to  their 
kind  offices,  I  shall  endeavor  to  fulfil  — • 

• 
Bridget  enters  and  begins  clearing  the  table. 

—  The  following  poem  is  my  (The  Professor's) 
only  contribution  to  the  great  department  of  Ocean- 
Cable  literature.  As  all  the  poets  of  this  country  will 
be  engaged  for  the  next  six  weeks  in  writing  for  the 
premium  offered  by  the  Crystal-Palace  Company  for 
the  Burns  Centenary,  (so  called,  according  to  our 
Benjamin  Franklin,  because  there  will  be  na'ry  a  cent 
for  any  of  us,)  poetry  will  be  very  scarce  and  dear. 
Consumers  may,  consequently,  be  glad  to  take  the 
present  article,  which,  by  the  aid  of  a  Latin  tutor  -and 
a  Professor  of  Chemistry,  will  be  found  intelligible  to 
the  educated  classes. 

DE  SAUTY. 

AX  ELECTRO-CHEMICAL  ECLOGUE. 

Professor.  Blue-Nose. 

PROFESSOR. 

Tell  me,  O  Provincial  !  speak,  Ceruleo-Nasal ! 
Lives  there  one  De  Sauty  extant  now  among  you, 
Whispering  Boanerges,  son  of  silent  thunder, 
Holding  talk  with  nations  ? 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     27 

Is  there  a  De  Sauty,  ambulant  on  Tellus, 
Bifid-cleft  like  mortals,  dormient  in  night-cap, 
Having  sight,  smell,  hearing,  food-receiving  feature 
Three  times  daily  patent  ? 

Breathes  there  such  a  being,  O  Ceruleo-Nasal  ? 
Or  is  he  a  mythus,  —  ancient  word  for  "humbug,"  — 
Such  as  Livy  told  about  the  wolf  that  wet-nursed 
Romulus  and  Remus  ? 

Was  he  born  of  woman,  this  alleged  De  Sauty  ? 
Or  a  living  product  of  galvanic  action, 
Like  the  acarus  bred  in  Crosse's  flint-solution  ? 
Speak,  thou  Cyano-Rbinal ! 


BLUE-NOSE. 

Many  things  thou  askest,  jackknife-bearing  stranger, 
Much-conjecturing  mortal,  pork-and-tfeacle-waster  ! 
Pretermit  thy  whittling,  wheel  thine  ear-flap  toward  me, 
Thou  sbalt  hear  them  answered. 

• 

When  the  charge  galvanic  tingled  through  the  cable, 
At  the  polar  focus  of  the  wire  electric 
Suddenly  appeared  a  white-faced  man  among  us  : 
Called  himself  "DE  SAUTY." 

As  the  small  opossum  held  in  pouch  maternal 
Grasps  the  nutrient  organ  whence  the  term  mammalia, 
So  the  unknown  stranger  held  the  wire  electric, 
Sucking  in  the  current. 

When     the    current     strengthened,    bloomed    the    pale-faced 

stranger,  — 

Took  no  drink  nor  victual,  yet  grew  fat  and  rosy,  — 
And  from  time  to  time,  in  sharp  articulation, 
Said,  "  A II  right  I    DE  SAUTY." 

From  the  lonely  station  passed  the  utterance,  spreading 
Through  the  pines  and  hemlocks  to  the  groves  of  steeples 


28     THE  PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Till  the  land  was  filled  with  loud  reverberations 
Of  "  All  right !    DE  SAUTY." 

When  the  current  slackened,  drooped  the  mystic  stranger,  — 
Faded,  faded,  faded,  as  the  stream  grew  weaker,  — 
Wasted  to  a  shadow,  with  a  hartshorn  odor 
Of  disintegration. 

Drops  of  deliquescence  glistened  on  his  forehead, 
Whitened  round  his  feet  the  dust  of  efflorescence, 
Till  one  Monday  morning,  when  the  flow  suspended, 
There  was  no  De  Sauty. 

Nothing  but  a  cloud  of  elements  organic, 
C.  O.  H.  N.  Ferrura,  Chor.  Flu.  Sil.  Potassa, 
Calc.  Sod.  Phosph.  Mag.  Sulphur,  Mang.  (?)  Alumin.   (?)  Cu 
prum,  (?) 
Such  as  man  is  made  of. 

Born  of  stream  galvanic,  with  it  he  had  perished  ! 
There  is  no  De  Sauty  now  there  is  no  current  1 
Give  us  a  new  cable,  then  again  we  '11  hear  him 
Cry,  "All  right!    DE  SAUTY."     • 


n. 

Back  again !  —  A  turtle  —  which  means  a  tortoise 
—  is  fond  of  his  shell ;  but  if  you  put  a  live  coal  on 
his  back,  he  crawls  out  of  it.  So  the  boys  say. 

It  is  a  libel  on  the  turtle.  He  grows  to  his  shell, 
and  his  shell  is  in  his  body  as  much  as  his  body  is  in 
his  shell.  —  I  don't  think  there  is  one  of  our  boarders 
quite  so  testudineous  as  I  am.  Nothing  but  a  combi 
nation  of  motives,  more  peremptory  than  the  coal  on 
the  turtle's  back,  could  have  got  me  to  leave  the  shel 
ter  of  my  carapace ;  and  after  memorable  interviews, 
and  kindest  hospitalities,  and  grand  sights,  and  huge 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      29 

influx  of  patriotic  pride,  —  for  every  American  owns 
all  America,  — 

"  Creation's  heir,  —  the  world,  the  world  is  " 

his,  if  anybody's,  —  I  come  bock  with  the  feeling 
which  a  boned  turkey  might  experience,  if,  retaining 
his  consciousness,  he  were  allowed  to  resume  his  skel 
eton. 

"Welcome,  O  Fighting  Gladiator,  and  Recumbent 
Cleopatra,  and  Dying  Warrior,  whose  classic  outlines 
(reproduced  in  the  calcined  mineral  of  Lutetia)  crown 
my  loaded  shelves!  Welcome,  ye  triumphs  of  pic 
torial  art  (repeated  by  the  magic  graver)  that  look 
down  upon  me  from  the  walls  of  my  sacred  cell !  Ve- 
salius,  as  Titian  drew  him,  high-fronted,  still-eyed, 
thick-bearded,  with  signet-ring,  as  beseems  a  gentle 
man,  with  book  and  carelessly-held  eyeglass,  marking 
him  a  scholar;  thou,  too,  Jan  Kuyper,  commonly 
called  Jan  Praktiseer,  old  man  of  a  century  and  seven 
years  besides,  father  of  twenty  sons  and  two  daugh 
ters,  cut  in  copper  by  Houbraken,  bought  from  a  port 
folio  on  one  of  the  Paris  quais  ;  and  ye  Three  Trees 
of  Rembrandt,  black  in  shadow  against  the  blaze  of 
sunlight ;  and  thou  Rosy  Cottager  of  Sir  Joshua,  — 
thy  roses  hinted  by  the  peppery  burin  of  Bartolozzi ; 
ye,  too,  of  lower  grades  in  nature,  yet  not  unlovely 
nor  unrenowned,  Young  Bull  of  Paulus  Potter,  and 
Sleeping  Cat  of  Cornelius  Visscher;  welcome  once 
more  to  my  eyes !  The  old  books  look  out  from  the 
shelves,  and  I  seem  to  read  on  their  backs  something 
besides  their  titles,  —  a  kind  of  solemn  greeting. 
The  crimson  carpet  flushes  warm  under  my  feet.  The 
arm-chair  hugs  me ;  the  swivel-chair  spins  round  with 
me,  as  if  it  were  giddy  with  pleasure ;  the  vast  recum- 


30     THE  PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

bent  fauteuil  stretches  itself  out  under  my  weight, 
as  one  joyous  with  food  and  wine  stretches  in  after- 
dinner  laughter. 

The  boarders  were  pleased  to  say  that  they  were 
glad  to  get  me  back.  One  of  them  ventured  a  com 
pliment,  namely,  —  that  I  talked  as  if  I  believed  what 
I  said.  —  This  was  apparently  considered  something 
unusual,  by  its  being  mentioned. 

One  who  means  to  talk  with  entire  sincerity,  —  I 
said,  —  always  feels  himself  in  danger  of  two  things, 
namely,  —  an  affectation  of  bluntness,  like  that  of 
which  Cornwall  accuses  Kent  in  "Lear,"  and  actual 
rudeness.  What  a  man  wants  to  do,  in  talking  with 
a  stranger,  is  to  get  and  to  give  as  much  of  the  best 
and  most  real  life  that  belongs  to  the  two  talkers  as  the 
time  will  let  him.  Life  is  short,  and  conversation  apt 
to  run  to  mere  words.  Mr.  Hue  I  think  it  is,  who  tells 
us  some  very  good  stories  about  the  way  in  which  two 
Chinese  gentlemen  contrive  to  keep  up  a  long  talk 
without  saying  a  word  which  has  any  meaning  in  it. 
Something  like  this  is  occasionally  heard  on  this  side 
of  the  Great  Wall.  The  best  Chinese  talkers  I  know 
are  some  pretty  women  whom  I  meet  from  time  to 
tune.  Pleasant,  airy,  complimentary,  the  little  flakes 
of  flattery  glimmering  in  their  talk  like  the  bits  of 
gold-leaf  in  eau-de-vie  de  Dantzic;  their  accents  flow 
ing  on  in  a  soft  ripple,  —  never  a  wave,  and  never  a 
calm  ;  words  nicely  fitted,  but  never  a  colored  phrase 
or  a  highly -flavored  epithet ;  they  turn  air  into  sylla 
bles  so  gracefully,  that  we  find  meaning  for  the  music 
they  make  as  we  find  faces  in  the  coals  and  fairy  pal 
aces  in  the  clouds.  There  is  something  very  odd, 
though,  about  this  mechanical  talk. 

You  have  sometimes  been  in  a  train  on  the  railroad 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.  31 

when  the  engine  was  detached  a  long  way  from  the 
station  you  were  approaching?  Well,  you  have  no 
ticed  how  quietly  and  rapidly  the  cars  kept  on,  just  as 
if  the  locomotive  were  drawing  them?  Indeed,  you 
would  not  have  suspected  that  you  were  travelling  on 
the  strength  of  a  dead  fact,  if  you  had  not  seen  the 
engine  running  away  from  you  on  a  side-track.  Upon 
my  conscience,  I  believe  some  of  these  pretty  women 
detach  their  minds  entirely,  sometimes,  from  their 
talk,  —  and,  what  is  more,  that  we  never  know  the 
difference.  Their  lips  let  off  the  fluty  syllables  just 
as  their  fingers  would  sprinkle  the  music-drops  from 
their  pianos;  unconscious  habit  turns  the  phrase  of 
thought  into  words  just  as  it  does  that  of  music  into 
notes.  —  Well,  they  govern  the  world  for  all  that,  — 
these  sweet-lipped  women,  —  because  beauty  is  the 
index  of  a  larger  fact  than  wisdom. 

—  The  Bombazine  wanted  an  explanation. 
Madam,  —  said  I,  —  wisdom  is  the  abstract  of  the 

past,  but  beauty  is  the  promise  of  the  future. 

—  All  this,  however,  is  not  what  I  was  going  to 
say.     Here  am  I,  suppose,  seated  —  we  will  say  at  a 
dinner-table  —  alongside  of  an  intelligent  Englishman. 
We  look  in  each  other's  faces,  — we  exchange  a  dozen 
words.     One  thing  is  settled :  we  mean  not  to  offend 
each  other,  —  to  be  perfectly  courteous,  —  more  than 
courteous ;  for  we  are  the  entertainer  and  the  enter 
tained,  and  cherish  particularly  amiable  feelings  to 
each  other.     The  claret  is  good ;  and  if  our  blood  red 
dens  a  little  with  its  warm  crimson,  we  are  none  the 
less  kind  for  it. 

— I  don't  think  people  that  talk  over  their  victuals 
are  like  to  say  anything  very  great,  especially  if  they 
get  their  heads  muddled  with  strong  drink  before  they 
begin  jabberin'. 


32     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The  Bombazine  uttered  this  with  a  sugary  sourness, 
as  if  the  words  had  been  steeped  in  a  solution  of 
acetate  of  lead.  —  The  boys  of  my  time  used  to  call  a 
hit  like  this  a  "side-winder." 

—  I  must  finish  this  woman.  — 

Madam,  —  I  said,  —  the  Great  Teacher  seems  to 
have  been  fond  of  talking  as  he  sat  at  meat.  Because 
this  was  a  good  while  ago,  in  a  far-off  place,  you  for 
get  what  the  true  fact  of  it  was,  —  that  those  were 
real  dinners,  where  people  were  hungry  and  thirsty, 
and  where  you  met  a  very  miscellaneous  company. 
Probably  there  was  a  great  deal  of  loose  talk  among 
the  guests;  at  any  rate,  there  was  always  wine,  we' 
may  believe. 

Whatever  may  be  the  hygienic  advantages  or  disad 
vantages  of  wine,  —  and  I  for  one,  except  for  certain 
particular  ends,  believe  in  water,  and,  I  blush  to  say 
it,  in  black  tea,  —  there  is  no  doubt  about  its  being 
the  grand  specific  against  dull  dinners.  A  score  of 
people  come  together  in  all  moods  of  mind  and  body. 
The  problem  is,  in  the  space  of  one  hour,  more  or  less, 
to  bring  them  all  into  the  same  condition  of  slightly 
exalted  life.  Food  alone  is  enough  for  one  person,  per 
haps,  —  talk,  alone,  for  another ;  but  the  grand  equal 
izer  and  fraternizer,  which  works  up  the  radiators  to 
their  maximum  radiation,  and  the  absorbents  to  their 
maximum  receptivity,  is  now  just  where  it  was  when 

The  conscious  water  saw  its  Lord  and  blushed, 

—  when  six  great  vessels  containing  water,  the  whole 
amounting  to  more  than  a  hogshead-full,  were  changed 
into  the  best  of  wine.  I  once  wrote  a  song  about 
wine,  in  which  I  spoke  so  warmly  of  it,  that  I  was 
afraid  some  would  think  it  was  written  inter  pooula  ; 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     33 

whereas  it  was  composed  in  the  bosom  of  my  family, 
under  the  most  tranquillizing  domestic  influences. 

—  The  divinity-student  turned  towards  me,  looking 
mischievous.  —  Can  you  tell  me,  —  he  said,  —  who 
wrote  a  song  for  a  temperance  celebration  once,  of 
which  the  following  is  a  verse  ?  — 

Alas  for  the  loved  one,  too  gentle  and  fair 
The  joys  of  the  banquet  to  chasten  and  share  ! 
Her  eye  lost  its  light  that  his  goblet  might  shine, 
And  the  rose  of  her  cheek  was  dissolved  in  his  wine  ! 

/  did,  —  I  answered.  —  What  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it?  —  I  will  tell  you  another  line  I  wrote  long 
ago:  — 

Don't  be  "  consistent,"  —  but  be  simply  true. 

The  longer  I  live,  the  more  I  am  satisfied  of  two 
things :  first,  that  the  truest  lives  are  those  that  are 
cut  rose-diamond-fashion,  with  many  facets  answering 
to  the  many-planed  aspects  of  the  world  about  them ; 
secondly,  that  society  is  always  trying  in  some  way  or 
other  to  grind  us  down  to  a  single  flat  surface.  It  is 
hard  work  to  resist  this  grinding-down  action.  —  Now 
give  me  a  chance.  Better  eternal  and  universal  ab 
stinence  than  the  brutalities  of  those  days  that  made 
wives  and  mothers  and  daughters  and  sisters  blush  for 
those  whom  they  should  have  honored,  as  they  came 
reeling  home  from  their  debauches !  Yet  better  even 
excess  than  lying  and  hypocrisy;  and  if  wine  is  upon 
all  our  tables,  let  us  praise  it  for  its  color  and  fra 
grance  and  social  tendency,  so  far  as  it  deserves,  and 
not  hug  a  bottle  in  the  closet  and  pretend  not  to  know 
the  use  of  a  wine-glass  at  a  public  dinner!  I  think 
you  will  find  that  people  who  honestly  mean  to  be 
true  really  contradict  themselves  much  more  rarely 


34     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

than  those  who  try  to  be  "consistent."  But  a  great 
many  things  we  say  can  be  made  to  appear  contradic 
tory,  simply  because  they  are  partial  views  of  a  truth, 
and  may  often  look  unlike  at  first,  as  a  front  view  of 
a  face  and  its  profile  often  do. 

Here  is  a  distinguished  divine,  for  whom  I  have 
great  respect,  for  I  owe  him  a  charming  hour  at  one 
of  our  literary  anniversaries,  and  he  has  often  spoken 
noble  words;  but  he  holds  up  a  remark  of  my  friend 
the  "Autocrat,"  —  which  I  grieve  to  say  he  twice 
misquotes,  by  omitting  the  very  word  which  gives  it  its 
significance, — the  word^wiW,  intended  to  typify  the 
mobility  of  the  restricted  will,  —  holds  it  up,  I  say, 
as  if  it  attacked  the  reality  of  the  self-determining 
principle,  instead  of  illustrating  its  limitations  by  an 
image.  Now  I  will  not  explain  any  farther,  still  less 
defend,  and  least  of  all  attack,  but  simply  quote  a  few 
lines  from  one  of  my  friend's  poems,  printed  more 
than  ten  years  ago,  and  ask  the  distinguished  gentle 
man  where  he  has  ever  asserted  more  strongly  or  abso 
lutely  the  independent  will  of  the  "subcreative  centre," 
as  my  heretical  friend  has  elsewhere  called  man. 

—  Thought,  conscience,  will,  to  make  them  all  thy  own 
He  rent  a  pillar  from  the  eternal  throne  ! 

—  Made  in  His  image,  thou  must  nobly  dare 
The  thorny  crown  of  sovereignty  to  share. 

—  Think  not  too  meanly  of  thy  low  estate  ; 
Thou  hast  a  choice  ;  to  choose  is  to  create  ! 

If  he  will  look  a  little  closely,  he  will  see  that  the 
profile  and  the  full-face  views  of  the  will  are  both 
true  and  perfectly  consistent.1 

1  The  more  I  have  observed  and  reflected,  the  more  limited 
seems  to  me  the  field  of  action  of  the  human  will.  Every  act 
of  choice  involves  a  special  relation  between  the  ego  and  the  con- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     35 

Now  let  us  come  back,  after  this  long  digression, 
to  the  conversation  with  the  intelligent  Englishman. 
We  begin  skirmishing  with  a  few  light  ideas,  — test 
ing  for  thoughts,  —  as  our  electro-chemical  friend,  De 
Sauty,  if  there  were  such  a  person,  would  test  for  his 
current;  trying  a  little  litmus-paper  for  acids,  and 
then  a  slip  of  turmeric-paper  for  alkalies,  as  chemists 
do  with  unknown  compounds ;  flinging  the  lead,  and 
looking  at  the  shells  and  sands  it  brings  up  to  find  out 
whether  we  are  like  to  keep  in  shallow  water,  or  shall 
have  to  drop  the  deep-sea  line ;  —  in  short,  seeing  what 
we  have  to  deal  with.  If  the  Englishman  gets  his  H's 
pretty  well  placed,  he  comes  from  one  of  the  higher 
grades  of  the  British  social  order,  and  we  shall  find 
him  a  good  companion. 

But,  after  all,  here  is  a  great  fact  between  us. 
We  belong  to  two  different  civilizations,  and,  until  we 
recognize  what  separates  us,  we  are  talking  like  Pyra- 
mus  and  Thisbe,  without  any  hole  in  the  wall  to  talk 
through.  Therefore,  on  the  whole,  if  he  were  a  su 
perior  fellow,  incapable  of  mistaking  it  for  personal 
conceit,  I  think  I  would  let  out  the  fact  of  the  real 
American  feeling  about  Old-World  folks.  They  are 
children  to  us  in  certain  points  of  view.  They  are 
playing  with  toys  we  have  done  with  for  whole-genera- 

ditions  before  it.  But  no  man  knows  what  forces  are  at  work 
in  the  determination  of  his  ego.  The  bias  which  decides  his 
choice  between  two  or  more  motives  may  come  from  some  un 
suspected  ancestral  source,  of  which  he  knows  nothing  at  all. 
He  is  automatic  in  virtue  of  that  hidden  spring  of  reflex  action, 
all  the  time  having  the  feeling  that  he  is  self-determining.  The 
story  of  Elsie  Venner,  written  soon  after  this  book  was  pub 
lished,  illustrates  the  direction  in  which  my  thought  was  moving. 
The  imaginary  subject  of  the  story  obeyed  her  will,  but  her  will 
obeyed  the  mysterious  ante-natal  poisoning  influence. 


36     THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tions.  That  silly  little  drum  they  are  always  beating 
on,  and  the  trumpet  and  the  feather  they  make  so 
much  noise  and  cut  such  a  figure  with,  we  have  not 
quite  outgrown,  but  play  with  much  less  seriously  and 
constantly  than  they  do.  Then  there  is  a  whole  mu 
seum  of  wigs,  and  masks,  and  lace-coats,  and  gold- 
sticks,  and  grimaces,  and  phrases,  which  we  laugh  at 
honestly,  without  affectation,  that  are  still  used  in  the 
Old- World  puppet-shows.  I  don't  think  we  on  our 
part  ever  understand  the  Englishman's  concentrated 
loyalty  and  specialized  reverence.  But  then  we  do 
think  more  of  a  man,  as  such,  (barring  some  little  dif 
ficulties  about  race  and  complexion  which  the  Eng 
lishman  will  touch  us  on  presently,)  than  any  people 
that  ever  lived  did  think  of  him.  Our  reverence  is  a 
great  deal  wider,  if  it  is  less  intense.  We  have  caste 
among  us,  to  some  extent,  it  is  true ;  but  there  is  never 
a  collar  on  the  American  wolf-dog  such  as  you  often 
see  on  the  English  mastiff,  notwithstanding  his  robust, 
hearty  individuality. 

This  confronting  of  two  civilizations  is  always  a 
grand  sensation  to  me;  it  is  like  cutting  through  the 
isthmus  and  letting  the  two  oceans  swim  into  each  oth 
er's  laps.  The  trouble  is,  it  is  so  difficult  to  let  out 
the  whole  American  nature  without  its  self-assertion 
seeming  to  take  a  personal  character.  But  I  never 
enjoy  the  Englishman  so  much  as  when  he  talks  of 
church  and  king  like  Manco  Capac  among  the  Peru 
vians.  Then  you  get  the  real  British  flavor,  which 
the  cosmopolite  Englishman  loses. 

How  much  better  this  thorough  interpenetration  of 
ideas  than  a  barren  interchange  of  courtesies,  or  a 
bush-fighting  argument,  in  which  each  man  tries  to 
cover  as  much  of  himself  and  expose  as  much  of  his 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.     87 

opponent  as  the  tangled  thicket  of  the  disputed  ground 
will  let  him ! 

— My  thoughts  flow  in  layers  or  strata,  at  least 
three  deep.  I  follow  a  slow  person's  talk,  and  keep  a 
perfectly  clear  under-current  of  my  own  beneath  it. 
Under  both  runs  obscurely  a  consciousness  belonging 
to  a  third  train  of  reflections,  independent  of  the  two 
others.  I  will  try  to  write  out  a  Mental  movement  in 
three  parts. 

A.  —  First  voice,  or  Mental  Soprano,  —  thought 
follows  a  woman  talking. 

B.  — Second  voice,  or  Mental  Barytone,  — my  run 
ning  accompaniment. 

C.  —  Third  voice,  or  Mental  Basso,  —  low  grumble 
of  an  importunate  self-repeating  idea. 

A.  —  White  lace,  three  skirts,  looped  with  flowers, 
wreath  of  apple-blossoms,  gold  bracelets,  diamond  pin 
and  ear-rings,  the  most  delicious  berths  you  ever  saw, 
white  satin  slippers  — 

B.  —  Deuse  take  her !     What  a  fool  she  is  I     Hear 
her  chatter !     (Look  out  of  window  just  here.  —  Two 
pages  and  a  half  of  description,  if  it  were*  all  written 
out,  in  one  tenth  of  a  second.) — Go  ahead,  old  lady! 
(Eye  catches  picture  over  fireplace.)     There  's  that  in 
fernal  family  nose!     Came  over  in  the  "Mayflower" 
on  the  first  old  fool's  face.     Why  don't  they  wear  a 
ring  in  it? 

C.  —  You  '11  be  late  at  lecture,  —  late  at  lecture,  — 
late,  —  late,  —  late  — 

I  observe  that  a  deep  layer  of  thought  sometimes 
makes  itself  felt  through  the  superincumbent  strata, 


38      THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

thus :  —  The  usual  single  or  double  currents  shall  flow 
on,  but  there  shall  be  an  influence  blending  with  them, 
disturbing  them  in  an  obscure  way,  until  all  at  once  I 
say,  —  Oh,  there !  I  knew  there  was  something  trou 
bling  me,  —  and  the  thought  which  had  been  working 
through  comes  up  to  the  surface  clear,  definite,  and 
articulates  itself,  —  a  disagreeable  duty,  perhaps,  or 
an  unpleasant  recollection. 

The  inner  world  of  thought  and  the  outer  world  of 
events  are  alike  in  this,  that  they  are  both  brimful. 
There  is  no  space  between  consecutive  thoughts,  or 
between  the  never-ending  series  of  actions.  All  pack 
tight,  and  mould  their  surfaces  against  each  other,  so 
that  in  the  long  run  there  is  a  wonderful  average  uni 
formity  in  the  forms  of  both  thoughts  and  actions,  — 
just  as  you  find  that  cylinders  crowded  all  become 
hexagonal  prisms,  and  spheres  pressed  together  are 
formed  into  regular  polyhedra. 

Every  event  that  a  man  would  master  must  be 
mounted  on  the  run,  and  no  man  ever  caught  the  reins 
of  a  thought  except  as  it  galloped  by  him.  So,  to 
carry  out,  with  another  comparison,  my  remark  about 
the  layers  of  thought,  we  may  consider  the  mind  as  it 
moves  among  thoughts  or  events,  like  a  circus-rider 
whirling  round  with  a  great  troop  of  horses.  He  can 
mount  a  fact  or  an  idea,  and  guide  it  more  or  less 
completely,  but  he  cannot  stop  it.  So,  as  I  said  in 
another  way  at  the  beginning,  he  can  stride  two  or 
three  thoughts  at  once,  but  not  break  their  steady 
walk,  trot,  or  gallop.  He  can  only  take  his  foot  from 
the  saddle  of  one  thought  and  put  it  on  that  of  an 
other. 

-  What  is  the   saddle   of  a  thought?     Why,  a 
word,  of  course.  —  Twenty  years  after  you  have  dis- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      39 

missed  a  thought,  it  suddenly  wedges  up  to  you 
through  the  press,  as  if  it  had  been  steadily  galloping 
round  and  round  all  that  time  without  a  rider. 

The  will  does  not  act  in  the  interspaces  of  thought, 
for  there  are  no  such  interspaces,  but  simply  steps 
from  the  back  of  one  moving  thought  upon  that  of 
another. 

—  I  should  like  to  ask,  —  said  the  divinity-student, 
—  since  we  are  getting  into  metaphysics,  how  you  can 
admit  space,  if  all  things  are  in  contact,  and  how  you 
can  admit  time,  if  it  is  always  now  to  something? 

—  I  thought  it  best  not  to  hear  this  question. 

—  I  wonder  if  you  know  this  class  of  philosophers 
in  books  or  elsewhere.     One  of  them  makes  his  bow 
to  the  public,  and  exhibits  an  unfortunate  truth  ban 
daged  up  so  that  it  cannot  stir  hand  or  foot,  —  as  help 
less,  apparently,  and  unable  to  take  care  of  itself,  as 
an  Egyptian  mummy.     He  then  proceeds,  with  the 
air  and  method  of  a  master,  to  take  off  the  bandages. 
Nothing  can  be  neater  than  the  way  in  which  he  does 
it.     But  as  he  takes  off  layer  after  layer,  the  truth 
seems  to  grow  smaller  and  smaller,  and  some  of  its 
outlines  begin  to  look  like  something  we  have  seen  be 
fore.     At  last,  when  he  has  got  them  all  off,  and  the 
truth  struts  out  naked,  we  recognize  it  as  a  diminutive 
and  familiar  acquaintance  whom  we  have  known  in  the 
streets  all  our  lives.     The  fact  is,  the  philosopher  has 
coaxed  the  truth  into  his  study  and  put  all  those  ban 
dages  on;  of  course  it  is  not  very  hard  for  him  to 
take  them  off.     Still,  a  great  many  people  like  to 
watch  the  process,  —  he  does  it  so  neatly  ! 

Dear  !  dear  !  I  am  ashamed  to  write  and  talk,  some 
times,  when  I  see  how  those  functions  of  the  large- 
brained,  thumb-opposing  plantigrade  are  abused  by 


40     THE   PEOFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

my  fellow-vertebrates,  —perhaps  by  myself.  How 
they  spar  for  wind,  instead  of  hitting  from  the  shoul 
der  ! 

—  The  young  fellow  called  John  arose  and  placed 
himself  in  a  neat  fighting   attitude.  —  Fetch  on  the 
fellah  that  makes  them  long  words  !  —  he  said,  —  and 
planted  a  straight  hit  with  the  right  fist  in  the  con 
cave  palm  of  the  left  hand  with  a  click  like  a  cup  and 
ball.  —  You  small  boy  there,  hurry  up  that  "  Web 
ster's  Unabridged !  'f 

The  little  gentleman  with  the  malformation,  before 
described,  shocked  the  propriety  of  the  breakfast-table 
by  a  loud  utterance  of  three  words,  of  which  the  two 
last  were  "Webster's  Unabridged,"  and  the  first  was 
an  emphatic  monosyllable.  —  Beg  pardon,  —  he  added, 
—  forgot  myself.  But  let  us  have  an  English  diction 
ary,  if  we  are  to  have  any.  I  don't  believe  in  clip 
ping  the  coin  of  the  realm,  Sir  !  If  I  put  a  weather 
cock  on  my  house,  Sir,  I  want  it  to  tell  which  way 
the  wind  blows  up  aloft,  —  oft  from  the  prairies  to 
the  ocean,  or  off  from  the  ocean  to  the  prairies,  or 
any  way  it  wants  to  blow  !  I  don't  want  a  weather 
cock  with  a  winch  in  an  old  gentleman's  study  that  he 
can  take  hold  of  and  turn,  so  that  the  vane  shall  point 
west  when  the  great  wind  overhead  is  blowing  east 
with  all  its  might,  Sir !  Wait  till  we  give  you  a 
dictionary,  Sir !  It  takes  Boston  to  do  that  thing, 
Sir! 

—  Some  folks  think  water  can't  run  down-hill  any 
where  out  of  Boston,  —  remarked  the  Koh-i-noor. 

I  don't  know  what  some  folks  think  so  well  as 
I  know  what  some  fools  say,  —  rejoined  the  Little 
Gentleman.  —  If  importing  most  dry  goods  made  the 
best  scholars,  I  dare  say  you  would  know  where  to 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     41 

look  for  'em.  —  Mr.  Webster  could  n't  spell,  Sir,  or 
would  n't  spell,  Sir,  — at  any  rate,  he  did  n't  spell; 
and  the  end  of  it  was  a  fight  between  the  owners  of 
some  copyrights  and  the  dignity  of  this  noble  lan 
guage  which  we  have  inherited  from  our  English  fa 
thers.  Language  !  —  the  blood  of  the  soul,  Sir  !  into 
which  our  thoughts  run  and  out  of  which  they  grow  ! 
We  know  what  a  word  is  worth  here  in  Boston. 
Young  Sam  Adams  got  up  on  the  stage  at  Commence 
ment,  out  at  Cambridge  there,  with  his  gown  on,  the 
Governor  and  Council  looking  on  in  the  name  of  his 
Majesty,  King  George  the  Second,  and  the  girls  look 
ing  down  out  of  the  galleries,  and  taught  people  how 
to  spell  a  word  that  was  n't  in  the  Colonial  dictiona 
ries  !  J??-e,  re,  s-i-s,  sis,  t-a-n-c-e,  tance,  Resistance  I 
That  was  in  '43,  and  it  was  a  good  many  years  before 
the  Boston  boys  began  spelling  it  with  their  muskets ; 
—  but  when  they  did  begin,  they  spelt  it  so  loud  that 
the  old  bedridden  women  in  the  English  almshouses 
heard  every  syllable  !  Yes,  yes,  yes,  —  it  was  a  good 
while  before  those  other  two  Boston  boys  got  the  class 
so  far  along  that  it  could  spell  those  two  hard  words, 
Independence  and  Union  !  I  tell  you  what,  Sir,  there 
are  a  thousand  lives,  aye,  sometimes  a  million,  go  to 
get  a  new  word  into  a  language  that  is  worth  speaking. 
We  know  what  language  means  too  well  here  in  Bos 
ton  to  play  tricks  with  it.  We  never  make  a  new  word 
till  we  have  made  a  new  thing  or  a  new  thought,  Sir  I 
When  we  shaped  the  new  mould  of  this  continent,  we 
had  to  make  a  few.  When,  by  God's  permission,  we 
abrogated  the  primal  curse  of  maternity,  we  had  to 
make  a  word  or  two.  The  cutwater  of  this  great  Le 
viathan  clipper,  the  OCCIDENTAL,  —  this  thirty -masted 
wind-and-steam  wave-crusher,  —  must  throw  a  little 


42     THE   PKOFESSOB   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

spray  over  the  human  vocabulary  as  it  splits  the  wa 
ters  of  a  new  world's  destiny  ! 

He  rose  as  he  spoke,  until  his  stature  seemed  to 
swell  into  the  fair  human  proportions.  His  feet  must 
have  been  on  the  upper  round  of  his  high  chair ;  — 
that  was  the  only  way  I  could  account  for  it. 

Puts  her  through  fust-rate,  —  said  the  young  fellow 
whom  the  boarders  call  John. 

The  venerable  and  kind-looking  old  gentleman  who 
sits  opposite  said  he  remembered  Sam  Adams  as  Gov 
ernor.  An  old  man  in  a  brown  coat.  Saw  him  take 
the  Chair  on  Boston  Common.  Was  a  boy  then,  and 
remembers  sitting  on  the  fence  in  front  of  the  old 
Hancock  house.  Recollects  he  had  a  glazed  'lection- 
bun,  and  sat  eating  it  and  looking  down  on  to  the 
Common.  Lalocks  flowered  late  that  year,  and  he 
got  a  great  bunch  off  from  the  bushes  in  the  Hancock 
front-yard. 

Them  'lection -buns  are  no  go,  —  said  the  young 
man  John,  so  called.  —  I  know  the  trick.  Give  a 
fellah  a  fo'penny  bun  in  the  mornin',  an'  he  downs 
the  whole  of  it.  In  about  an  hour  it  swells  up  in  his 
stomach  as  big  as  a  football,  and  his  feedin'  's  sp'ilt 
for  that  day.  That 's  the  way  to  stop  off  a  young  one 
from  eatin'  up  all  the  'lection  dinner. 

Salem  !  Salem  !  not  Boston,  —  shouted  the  little 
man. 

But  the  Koh-i-noor  laughed  a  great  rasping  laugh, 
and  the  boy  Benjamin  Franklin  looked  sharp  at  his 
mother,  as  if  he  remembered  the  bun-experiment  as  a 
part  of  his  past  personal  history. 

The  Little  Gentleman  was  holding  a  fork  in  his  left 
hand.  He  stabbed  a  boulder  of  home-made  bread 
with  it,  mechanically,  and  looked  at  it  as  if  it  ought 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     43 

to  shriek.      It  did  not,  —  but  he  sat  as  if  watch.- 
ing  it. 

—  Language  is  a  solemn  thing,  —  I  said.  —  It 
grows  out  of  life, —  out  of  its  agonies  and  ecstasies,  its 
wants  and  its  weariness.  Every  language  is  a  temple, 
in  which  the  soul  of  those  who  speak  it  is  enshrined. 
Because  time  softens  its  outlines  and  rounds  the  sharp 
angles  of  its  cornices,  shall  a  fellow  take  a  pickaxe  to 
help  time?  Let  me  tell  you  what  comes  of  meddling 
with  things  that  can  take  care  of  themselves. — A 
friend  of  mine  had  a  watch  given  him,  when  he  was  a 
boy,  — a  "bull's  eye,"  with  a  loose  silver  case  that 
came  off  like  an  oyster-shell  from  its  contents;  you 
know  them,  —  the  cases  that  you  hang  on  your  thumb, 
while  the  core,  or  the  real  watch,  lies  in  your  hand  as 
naked  as  a  peeled  apple.  Well,  he  began  with  taking 
off  the  case,  and  so  on  from  one  liberty  to  another, 
until  he  got  it  fairly  open,  and  there  were  the  works, 
as  good  as  if  they  were  alive,  —  crown-wheel,  balance- 
wheel,  and  all  the  rest.  All  right  except  one  thing, 
—  there  was  a  confounded  little  hair  had  got  tangled 
round  the  balance-wheel.  So  my  young  Solomon  got 
a  pair  of  tweezers,  and  caught  hold  of  the  hair  very 
nicely,  and  pulled  it  right  out,  without  touching  any 
of  the* wheels, — when, — buzzzZZZ!  and  the  watch 
had  done  up  twenty -four  hours  in  double  magnetic- 
telegraph  time!  —  The  English  language  was  wound 
up  to  run  some  thousands  of  years,  I  trust;  but  if 
everybody  is  to  be  pulling  at  everything  he  thinks  is 
a  hair,  our  grandchildren  will  have  to  make  the  dis 
covery  that  it  is  a  hair-spring,  and  the  old  Anglo- 
Norman  soul's -timekeeper  will  run  down,  as  so  many 
other  dialects  have  done  before  it.  I  can't  stand  this 
meddling  any  better  than  you,  Sir.  But  we  have  a 


44     THE  PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

great  deal  to  be  proud  of  in  the  lifelong  labors  of 
that  old  lexicographer,  and  we  must  n't  be  ungrateful. 
Besides,  don't  let  us  deceive  ourselves,  —  the  war  of 
the  dictionaries  is  only  a  disguised  rivalry  of  cities, 
colleges,  and  especially  of  publishers.  After  all,  it  is 
likely  that  the  language  will  shape  itself  by  larger 
forces  than  phonography  and  dictionary -making.  You 
may  spade  up  the  ocean  as  much  as  you  like,  and  har 
row  it  afterwards,  if  you  can,  —  but  the  moon  will 
still  lead  the  tides,  and  the  winds  will  form  their 
surface. 

—  Do  you  know  Richardson's  Dictionary?  —  I  said 
to  my  neighbor  the  divinity-student. 

Haow?  —  said  the  divinity-student.  —  He  colored, 
as  he  noticed  on  my  face  a  twitch  in  one  of  the  mus 
cles  which  tuck  up  the  corner  of  the  mouth,  (zygoma- 
ticus  major,')  and  which  I  could  not  hold  back  from 
making  a  little  movement  on  its  own  account. 

It  was  too  late.  —  A  country -boy,  lassoed  when  he 
was  a  half -grown  colt.  Just  as  good  as  a  city -boy, 
and  in  some  ways,  perhaps,  better,  —  but  caught  a 
little  too  old  not  to  carry  some  marks  of  his  earlier 
ways  of  life.  Foreigners,  who  have  talked  a  strange 
tongue  half  their  lives,  return  to  the  language  of  their 
childhood  in  their  dying  hours.  Gentlemen  in  fine 
linen,  and  scholars  in  large  libraries,  taken  by  sur 
prise,  or  in  a  careless  moment,  will  sometimes  let  slip 
a  word  they  knew  as  boys  in  homespun  and  have  not 
spoken  since  that  time,  —  but  it  lay  there  under  all 
their  culture.  That  is  one  way  you  may  know  the 
country-boys  after  they  have  grown  rich  or  cele 
brated  ;  another  is  by  the  odd  old  family  names,  par 
ticularly  those  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  which  the 
good  old  people  have  saddled  them  with. 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.  45 

—  Boston  has  enough  of  England  about  it  to 
make  a  good  English  dictionary,  —  said  that  fresh- 
looking  youth  whom  I  have  mentioned  as  sitting  at 
the  right  upper  corner  of  the  table. 

I  turned  and  looked  him  full  in  the  face,  —  for  the 
pure,  manly  intonations  arrested  me.  The  voice  was 
youthful,  but  full  of  character.  —  I  suppose  some 
persons  have  a  peculiar  susceptibility  in  the  matter  of 
voice.  —  Hear  this. 

Not  long  after  the  American  Revolution,  a  young 
lady  was  sitting  in  her  father's  chaise  in  a  street  of 
this  town  of  Boston.  She  overheard  a  little  girl  talk 
ing  or  singing,  and  was  mightily  taken  with  the  tones 
of  her  voice.  Nothing  would  satisfy  her  but  she  must 
have  that  little  girl  come  and  live  in  her  father's 
house.  So  the  child  came,  being  then  nine  years  old. 
Until  her  marriage  she  remained  under  the  same  roof 
with  the  young  lady.  Her  children  became  succes 
sively  inmates  of  the  lady's  dwelling;  and  now,  sev 
enty  years,  or  thereabouts,  since  the  young  lady 
heard  the  child  singing,  one  of  that  child's  children 
and  one  of  her  grandchildren  are  with  her  in  that 
home,  where  she,  no  longer  young,  except  in  heart, 
passes  her  peaceful  days.  —  Three  generations  linked 
together  by  so  light  a  breath  of  accident ! 

I  liked  the  sound  of  this  youth's  voice,  I  said,  and 
his  look  when  I  came  to  observe  him  a  little  more 
closely.  His  complexion  had  something  better  than 
the  bloom  and  freshness  which  had  first  attracted  me ; 
—  it  had  that  diffused  tone  which  is  a  sure  index  of 
wholesome,  lusty  life.  A  fine  liberal  style  of  nature 
it  seemed  to  be:  hair  crisped,  moustache  springing 
thick  and  dark,  head  firmly  planted,  lips  finished,  as 
one  commonly  sees  them  in  gentlemen's  families,  a 


46     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

pupil  well  contracted,  and  a  mouth  that  opened 
frankly  with  a  white  flash  of  teeth  that  looked  as  if 
they  could  serve  him  as  they  say  Ethan  Allen's  used  to 
serve  their  owner,  —  to  draw  nails  with.  This  is  the 
kind  of  fellow  to  walk  a  frigate's  deck  and  bowl  his 
broadsides  into  the  "Gadlant  Thudnder-bomb,"  or 
any  forty  -  portholed  adventurer  who  would  like  to 
exchange  a  few  tons  of  iron  compliments.  —  I  don't 
know  what  put  this  into  my  head,  for  it  was  not  till 
some  time  afterward  I  learned  the  young  fellow  had 
been  in  the  naval  school  at  Annapolis.  Something 
had  happened  to  change  his  plan  of  life,  and  he  was 
now  studying  engineering  and  architecture  in  Boston. 

When  the  youth  made  the  short  remark  which  drew 
my  attention  to  him,  the  little  deformed  gentleman 
turned  round  and  took  a  long  look  at  him. 

Good  for  the  Boston  boy !  —  he  said. 

I  am  not  a  Boston  boy,  —  said  the  youth,  smiling, 
—  I  am  a  Marylander. 

I  don't  care  where  you  come  from,  — we  '11  make 
a  Boston  man  of  you,  —  said  the  little  gentleman.  — 
Pray,  what  part  of  Maryland  did  you  come  from,  and 
how  shall  I  call  you? 

The  poor  youth  had  to  speak  pretty  loud,  as  he  was 
at  the  right  upper  corner  of  the  table,  and  the  little 
gentleman  next  the  lower  left-hand  corner.  His  face 
flushed  a  little,  but  he  answered  pleasantly,  —  telling 
who  he  was,  as  if  the  little  man's  infirmity  gave  him 
a  right  to  ask  any  questions  he  wanted  to. 

Here  is  the  place  for  you  to  sit,  —  said  the  little 
gentleman,  pointing  to  the  vacant  chair  next  his  own, 
at  the  corner. 

You  're  go'n'  to  have  a  young  lady  next  you,  if  you 
wait  till  to-morrow,  —  said  the  landlady  to  him. 


THE    PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     47 

He  did  not  reply,  but  I  had  a  fancy  that  he  changed 
color.  It  can't  be  that  he  has  susceptibilities  with 
reference  to  a  contingent  young  lady!  It  can't  be 
that  he  has  had  experiences  which  make  him  sensitive ! 
Nature  could  not  be  quite  so  cruel  as  to  set  a  heart 
throbbing  in  that  poor  little  cage  of  ribs !  There  is 
no  use  in  wasting  notes  of  admiration.  I  must  ask 
the  landlady  about  him. 

These  are  some  of  the  facts  she  furnished.  —  Has 
not  been  long  with  her.  Brought  a  sight  of  furniture, 

—  could  n't  hardly  get  some  of  it  upstairs*    Has  n't 
seemed  particularly  attentive  to  the  ladies.    The  Bom 
bazine  (whom  she  calls  Cousin  something  or  other)  has 
tried  to  enter  into  conversation  with  him,  but  retired 
with  the  impression  that  he  was  indifferent  to  ladies' 
society.     Paid  his  bill  the  other  day  without  saying 
a  word   about  it.     Paid   it   in   gold,  —  had  a  great 
heap  of  twenty -dollar   pieces.     Hires  her  best  room. 
Thinks  he  is  a  very  nice  little  man,  but  lives  dreadful 
lonely  up  in  his  chamber.     Wants  the  care  of  some 
capable  nuss.     Never  pitied  anybody  more  in  her  life 

—  never  see  a  more  interestin'  person. 

—  My  intention  was,  wnen  I  began  making  these 
notes,  to  let  them  consist  principally  of  conversations 
between  myself  and  the  other  boarders.  So  they  will, 
very  probably;  but  my  curiosity  is  excited  about  this 
little  boarder  of  ours,  and  my  reader  must  not  be  dis 
appointed,  if  I  sometimes  interrupt  a  discussion  to 
give  an  account  of  whatever  fact  or  traits  I  may  dis 
cover  about  him.  It  so  happens  that  his  room  is  next 
to  mine,  and  I  have  the  opportunity  of  observing 
many  of  his  ways  without  any  active  movements  of  cu 
riosity.  .  That  his  room  contains  heavy  furniture,  that 
he  is  a  restless  little  body  and  is  apt  to  be  up  late, 


48     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that  he  talks  to  himself,  and  keeps  mainly  to  himself, 
is  nearly  all  I  "have  yet  found  out. 

One  curious  circumstance  happened  lately  which  I 
mention  without  drawing  an  absolute  inference.  — 
Being  at  the  studio  of  a  sculptor  with  whom  I  am 
acquainted,  the  other  day,  I  saw  a  remarkable  cast  of 
a  left  arm.  On  my  asking  where  the  model  came 
from,  he  said  it  was  taken  direct  from  the  arm  of  a 
deformed  person,  who  had  employed  one  of  the  Italian 
moulders  to  make  the  cast.  It  was  a  curious  case,  it 
should  seem,  of  one  beautiful  limb  upon  a  frame  oth 
erwise  singularly  imperfect  —  I  have  repeatedly  no 
ticed  this  little  gentleman's  use  of  his  left  arm.  Can 
he  have  furnished  the  model  I  saw  at  the  sculptor's? 

—  So  we  are  to  have  a  new  boarder  to-morrow. 
I  hope  there  wTill  be  something  pretty  and  pleasing 
about  her.      A  woman  with  a  creamy  voice,  and  fin 
ished  in  alto  rilievo,  would  be  a  variety  in  the  board 
ing-house,  —  a  little  more  marrow  and  a   little  less 
sinew  than  our  landlady  and  her  daughter  and  the 
bombazine-clad  female,  all  of  whom  are  of  the  turkey- 
drumstick  style  of  organization.     I  don't  mean  that 
these  are  our  only  female  companions;  but  the  rest 
being  conversational  non-combatants,  mostly  still,  sad 
feeders,  who  take  in  their  food  as  locomotives  take  in 
wood  and  water,  and  then  wither  away  from  the  table 
like  blossoms  that  never  come  to  fruit,  I  have  not  yet 
referred  to  them  as  individuals. 

I  wonder  what  kind  of  young  person  we  shall  see 
in  that  empty  chair  to-morrow ! 

—  I  read  this  song  to  the  boarders  after  breakfast 
the  other  morning.     It  was  written  for  our  fellows ; 
— you  know  who  they  are,  of  course. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     49 


THE  BOYS. 

Has  there  any  old  fellow  got  mixed  with  the  boys  ? 
If  there  has,  take  him  out,  without  making  a  noise  ! 
Hang  the  Almanac's  cheat  and  the-Catalogue's  spite  ! 
Old  Time  is  a  liar  !     We  're  twenty  to-night ! 

We  're  twenty  !     We  're  twenty  !     Who  says  we  are  more  ? 
He  's  tipsy,  —  young  jackanapes  !  —  show  him  the  door  !  — 
"Gray  temples  at  twenty  ?"  —  Yes  !  white,  if  we  please  ; 
Where  the  snow-flakes  fall  thickest  there 's  nothing  can  freeze  i 

Was  it  snowing  I  spoke  of  ?     Excuse  the  mistake  ! 
Look  close,  —  you  will  see  not  a  sign  of  a  flake  ; 
We  want  some  new  garlands  for  those  we  have  shed,  — 
And  these  are  white  roses  in  place  of  the  red  ! 

We  've  a  trick,  we  young  fellows,  you  may  have  been  told, 
Of  talking  (in  public)  as  if  we  were  old  ;  — 
That  boy  we  call  "Doctor,"1  and  this  we  call  "Judge  ;2  — 
It 's  a  neat  little  fiction,  —  of  course  it 's  all  fudge. 

That  fellow 's  the  "  Speaker,"  8  —  the  one  on  the  right ; 
"  Mr.  Mayor,"  *  my  young  one,  how  are  you  to-night  ? 
That 's  our  "  Member  of  Congress,"  5  we  say  when  we  chaff  ; 
There 's  the  "  Reverend  "  6  Whaf's  his  name  ?  —  don't  make  me 
laugh ! 

That  boy  with  the  grave  mathematical  look  * 
Made  believe  he  had  written  a  wonderful  book, 
And  the  ROYAL  SOCIETY  thought  it  was  true  / 
So  they  chose  him  right  in  ;  a  good  joke  it  was,  too. 

There  's  a  boy,  —  we  pretend,  —  with  a  three-decker-brain- 
That  could  harness  a  team  with  a  logical  chain  ; 

1  Francis  Thomas.  2  George  Tyler  Bigelow. 

8  Francis  Boardman  Crowninshield. 
4  G.  W.  Richardson.  6  George  Thomas  Davis. 

8  James  Freeman  Clarke.        7  Benjamin  Peirce. 


50     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

When  he  spoke  for  our  manhood  in  syllabled  fire, 

We  called  him  "  The  Justice,"  —  but  now  he 's  "  The  Squire." 

And  there  's  a  nice  youngster  of  excellent  pith,  2  — 
Fate  tried  to  conceal  him  by  naming  him  Smith,  — 
But  he  shouted  a  song  for  the  brave  and  the  free,  — 
—  Just  read  on  his  medal,  —  "  My  country,  —  of  thee  !  " 

You  hear  that  boy  laughing  ?  —  you  think  he  's  all  fun,  — 
But  the  angels  laugh,  too,  at  the  good  he  has  done  ; 
The  children  laugh  loud  as  they  troop  to  his  call, 
And  the  poor  man  that  knows  him  laughs  loudest  of  all  !  8 

Yes,  we  're  boys,  —  always  playing  with  tongue  or  with  pen, 
And  I  sometimes  have  asked,  —  Shall  we  ever  be  men  ? 
Shall  we  always  be  youthful  and  laughing  and  gay, 
Till  the  last  dear  companion  drops  smiling  away  ? 

Then  here  's  to  our  boyhood,  its  gold  and  its  gray  ! 
The  stars  of  its  Winter,  the  dews  of  its  May  ! 
And  when  we  have  done  with  our  life-lasting  toys, 
Dear  Father,  take  care  of  thy  children,  the  Boys  ! 


III. 

\TJie  Professor  talks  with  the  ffeader.     He  tells  a 
Young  Girl's  Story. .] 

When  the  elements  that  went  to  the  making  of  the 
first  man,  father  of  mankind,  had  been  withdrawn 
from  the  world  of  unconscious  matter,  the  balance  of 
creation  was  disturbed.  The  materials  that  go  to  the 
making  of  one  woman  were  set  free  by  the  abstraction 
from  inanimate  nature  of  one  man's-worth  of  mascu 
line  constituents.  These  combined  to  make  our  first 
mother,  by  a  logical  necessity  involved  in  the  previous 

1  Benjamin  Robbins  Curtis.      3  Samuel  Francis  Smith. 
8  Stat  nominis  umbra. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      51 

creation  of  our  common  father.  All  this,  mythically, 
illustratively,  and  by  no  means  doctrinally  or  polemi 
cally. 

The  man  implies  the  woman,  you  will  understand. 
The  excellent  gentleman  whom  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
setting  right  in  a  trifling  matter  a  few  weeks  ago  be 
lieves  in  the  frequent  occurrence  of  miracles  at  the 
present  day.  So  do  I.  I  believe,  if  you  could  find 
an  uninhabited  coral-reef  island,  in  the  middle  of  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  with  plenty  of  cocoa-palms  and  bread 
fruit  on  it,  and  put  a  handsome  young  fellow,  like  our 
Marylander,  ashore  upon  it,  if  you  touched  there  a 
year  afterwards,  you  would  find  him  walking  under 
the  palm-trees  arm  in  arm  with  a  pretty  woman. 

Where  would  she  come  from? 

Oh,  that 's  the  miracle ! 

—  I  was  just   as  certain,   when  I  saw   that  fine, 
high-colored   youth  at   the  upper   right-hand   corner 
of  our  table,   that  there  would   appear  some  fitting 
feminine  counterpart  to  him,  as  if  I  had  been  a  clair 
voyant,  seeing  it  all  beforehand. 

—  I  have  a  fancy  that  those  Marylanders  are  just 
about  near  enough  to  the  sun  to  ripen  well.  —  How 
some  of  us  fellows  remember  Joe  and  Harry,  Baltimo- 
reans,  both!     Joe,  with  his  cheeks  like  lady-apples, 
and  his  eyes  like  black-heart  cherries,  and  his  teeth 
like  the  whiteness  of  the  flesh  of  cocoanuts,  and  his 
laugh  that  set  the  chandelier-drops  rattling  overhead, 
as  we  sat  at    our   sparkling  banquets   in  those  gay 
times !     Harry,  champion,  by  acclamation,  of  the  col 
lege   heavy-weights,    broad-shouldered,     bull-necked, 
square-jawed,  six  feet  and  trimmings,  a  little  science, 
lots  of  pluck,  good-natured  as  a  steer  in  peace,  formid 
able  as  a  red-eyed  bison  in  the  crack  o'f  hand-to-hand 


52     THE   PROFESSOR    AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

battle!  Who  forgets  the  great  muster -day,  and  the 
collision  of  the  classic  with  the  democratic  forces? 
The  huge  butcher,  fifteen  stone,  —  two  hundred  and 
ten  pounds,  —  good  weight,  —  steps  out  like  Telamo- 
nian  Ajax,  defiant.  No  words  from  Harry,  the  Bal- 
timorean,  —  one  of  the  quiet  sort,  who  strike  first, 
and  do  the  talking,  if  there  is  any,  afterwards.  No 
words,  but,  in  the  place  thereof,  a  clean,  straight, 
hard  hit,  which  took  effect  with  a  spank  like  the  ex 
plosion  of  a  percussion-cap,  knocking  the  slayer  of 
beeves  down  a  sand-bank,  —  followed,  alas !  by  the  too 
impetuous  youth,  so  that  both  rolled  down  together, 
and  the  conflict  terminated  in  one  of  those  inglorious 
and  inevitable  Yankee  clinches,  followed  by  a  general 
melee,  which  make  our  native  fistic  encounters  so  dif 
ferent  from  such  admirably-ordered  contests  as  that 
which  I  once  saw  at  an  English  fair,  where  everything 
was  done  decently  and  in  order,  and  the  fight  began 
and  ended  with  such  grave  propriety,  that  a  sporting 
parson  need  hardly  have  hesitated  to  open  it  with  a 
devout  petition,  and,  after  it  was  over,  dismiss  the 
ring  with  a  benediction. 

I  can't  help  telling  one  more  story  about  this  great 
field-day,  though  it  is  the  most  wanton  and  irrelevant 
digression.  But  all  of  us  have  a  little  speck  of  fight 
underneath  our  peace  and  good-will  to  men, — just 
a  speck,  for  revolutions  and  great  emergencies,  you 
know,  —  so  that  we  should  not  submit  to  be  trodden 
quite  flat  by  the  first  heavy -heeled  aggressor  that  came 
along.  You  can  tell  a  portrait  from  an  ideal  head, 
I  suppose,  and  a  true  story  from  one  spun  out  of  the 
writer's  invention.  See  whether  this  sounds  true  or 
not. 

Admiral  Sir  Isaac  Coffin  sent  out  two  fine  blood- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     53 

horses,  Barefoot  and  Serab  by  name,  to  Massachu 
setts,  something  before  the  time  I  am  talking  of. 
With  them  came  a  Yorkshire  groom,  a  stocky  little 
fellow,  in  velvet  breeches,  who  made  that  mysterious 
hissing  noise,  traditionary  in  English  stables,  when  he 
rubbed  down  the  silken-skinned  racers,  in  great  per 
fection.  After  the  soldiers  had  come  from  the  muster- 
field,  and  some  of  the  companies  were  on  the  village- 
common,  there  was  still  some  skirmishing  between  a 
few  individuals  who  had  not  had  the  fight  taken  out 
of  them.  The  little  Yorkshire  groom  thought  he 
must  serve  out  somebody.  So  he  threw  himself  into 
an  approved  scientific  attitu^,  and,  in  brief,  emphatic 
language,  expressed  his  urgent  anxiety  to  accommo 
date  any  classical  young  gentleman  who  chose  to  con 
sider  himself  a  candidate  for  his  attentions.  I  don't 
suppose  there  were  many  of  the  college  boys  that 
would  have  been  a  match  for  him  in  the  art  which 
Englishmen  know  so  much  more  of  than  Americans, 
for  the  most  part.  However,  one  of  the  Sophomores, 
a  very  quiet,  peaceable  fellow,  just  stepped  out  of  the 
crowd,  and,  running  straight  at  the  groom,  as  he  stood 
there,  sparring  away,  stmck  him  with  the  sole  of  his 
foot,  a  straight  blow,  as  if  it  had  been  with  his  fist,  — 
and  knocked  him  heels  over  head  and  senseless,  so 
that  he  had  to  be  carried  off  from  the  field.  This 
ugly  way  of  hitting  is  the  great  trick  of  the  French 
savate,  which  is  not  commonly  thought  able  to  stand 
its  ground  against  English  pugilistic  science.1  —  These 
are  old  recollections,  with  not  much  to  recommend 
them,  except,  perhaps,  a  dash  of  life,  which  may  be 
worth  a  little  something. 

1  There  are  two  sides  to  this  question.     See  Larousse,  Grand 
Dictionnaire  Universel  du  XIX  Siecle,  article  "  Base." 


54     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The  young  Marylander  brought  them  all  up,  you 
may  remember.  He  recalled  to  my  mind  those  two 
splendid  pieces  of  vitality  I  told  you  of.  Both  have 
been  long  dead.  How  often  we  see  these  great  red 
flaring  flambeaux  of  life  blown  out,  as  it  were,  by  a 
puff  of  wind,  —  and  the  little,  single-wicked  night- 
lamp  of  being,  which  some  white-faced  and  attenuated 
invalid  shades  with  trembling  fingers,  flickering  on 
while  they  go  out  one  after  another,  until  its  glimmer 
is  all  that  is  left  to  us  of  the  generation  to  which  it 
belonged ! 

I  told  you  that  I  was  perfectly  sure,  beforehand,  we 
should  find  some  pleasing  girlish  or  womanly  shape  to 
fill  the  blank  at  our  table  and  match  the  dark-haired 
youth  at  the  upper  corner. 

There  she  sits,  at  the  very  opposite  corner,  just  as 
far  oft7  as  accident  could  put  her  from  this  handsome 
fellow,  by  whose  side  she  ought,  of  course,  to  be  sit 
ting.  One  of  the  "positive"  blondes,  as  my  friend, 
you  may  remember,  used  to  call  them.  Tawny -haired, 
amber-eyed,  full-throated,  skin  as  white  as  a  blanched 
almond.  Looks  dreamy  to  me,  not  self-conscious, 
though  a  black  ribbon  round  her  neck  sets  it  off  as  a 
Marie -Antoinette's  diamond-necklace  could  not  do. 
So  in  her  dress,  there  is  a  harmony  of  tints  that  looks 
as  if  an  artist  had  run  his  eye  over  her  and  given  a 
hint  or  two  like  the  finishing  touch  to  a  picture.  I 
can't  help  being  struck  with  her,  for  she  is  at  once 
rounded  and  fine  in  feature,  looks  calm,  as  blondes  are 
apt  to,  and  as  if  she  might  run  wild,  if  she  were  trifled 
with.  —  It  is  just  as  I  knew  it  would  be,  —  and  any 
body  can  see  that  our  young  Marylander  will  be  dead 
in  love  with  her  in  a  week. 

Then  if  that  little  man  would  only  turn  out  im- 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     55 

mensely  rich  and  have  the  good-nature  to  die  and  leave 
them  all  his  money,  it  would  be  as  nice  as  a  three-vol 
ume  novel. 

The  Little  Gentleman  is  in  a  flurry,  I  suspect,  with 
the  excitement  of  having  such  a  charming  neighbor 
next  him.  I  judge  so  mainly  by  his  silence  and  by  a 
certain  rapt  and  serious  look  on  his  face,  as  if  he  were 
thinking  of  something  that  had  happened,  or  that 
might  happen,  or  that  ought  to  happen,  —  or  how 
beautiful  her  young  life  looked,  or  how  hardly  Nature 
had  dealt  with  him,  or  something  which  struck  him 
silent,  at  any  rate.  I  made  several  conversational 
openings  for  him,  but  he  did  not  fire  up  as  he  often 
does.  I  even  went  so  far  as  to  indulge  in  a  fling  at 
the  State  House,  which,  as  we  all  know,  is  in  truth  a 
very  imposing  structure,  covering  less  ground  than  St. 
Peter's,  but  of  similar  general  effect.  The  little  man 
looked  up,  but  did  not  reply  to  my  taunt.  He  said  to 
the  young  lady,  however,  that  the  State  House  was  the 
Parthenon  of  our  Acropolis,  which  seemed  to  please 
her,  for  she  smiled,  and  he  reddened  a  little,  —  so  I 
thought.  I  don't  think  it  right  to  watch  persons  who 
are  the  subjects  of  special  infirmity,  — but  we  all  do  it. 

I  see  that  they  have  crowded  the  chairs  a  little  at 
that  end  of  the  table,  to  make  room  for  another  new 
comer  of  the  lady  sort.  A  well-mounted,  middle-aged 
preparation,  wearing  her  hair  without  a  cap,  —  pretty 
wide  in  the  parting,  though,  —  contours  vaguely 
hinted,  —  features  very  quiet,  —  says  little  as  yet,  but 
seems  to  keep  her  eye  on  the  young  lady,  as  if  having 
some  responsibility  for  her  - 

My  record  is  a  blank  for  some  days  after  this.  In 
the  mean  time  I  have  contrived  to  make  out  the  per- 


56     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

son  and  the  story  of  our  young  lady,  who,  according 
to  appearances,  ought  to  furnish  us  a  heroine  for  a 
boarding-house  romance  before  a  year  is  out.  It  is 
very  curious  that  she  should  prove  connected  with  a 
person  many  of  us  have  heard  of.  Yet,  curious  as  it 
is,  I  have  been  a  hundred  times  struck  with  the  cir 
cumstance  that  the  most  remote  facts  are  constantly 
striking  each  other;  just  as  vessels  starting  from  ports 
thousands  of  miles  apart  pass  close  to  each  other  in 
the  naked  breadth  of  the  ocean,  nay,  sometimes  even 
touch,  in  the  dark,  with  a  crack  of  timbers,  a  gurgling 
of  water,  a  cry  of  startled  sleepers,  —  a  cry  mysteri 
ously  echoed  in  warning  dreams,  as  the  wife  of  some 
Gloucester  fisherman,  some  coasting  skipper,  wakes 
with  a  shriek,  calls  the  name  of  her  husband,  and 
sinks  back  to  uneasy  slumbers  upon  her  lonely  pillow, 
—  a  widow. 

Oh,  these  mysterious  meetings!  Leaving  all  the 
vague,  waste,  endless  spaces  of  the  washing  desert, 
the  ocean-steamer  and  the  fishing-smack  sail  straight 
towards  each  other  as  if  they  ran  in  grooves  ploughed 
for  them  in  the  waters  from  the  beginning  of  creation ! 
Not  only  things  and  events,  but  our  own  thoughts,  are 
so  full  of  these  surprises,  that,  if  there  were  a  reader 
in  my  parish  who  did  riot  recognize  the  familiar  occur 
rence  of  what  I  am  now  going  to  mention,  I  should 
think  it  a  case  for  the  missionaries  of  the  Society  for 
the  Propagation  of  Intelligence  among  the  Comfortable 
Classes. 

There  are  about  as  many  twins  in  the  births  of 
thought  as  of  children.  For  the  first  time  in  your 
lives  you  learn  some  fact  or  come  across  some  idea. 
Within  an  hour,  a  day,  a  week,  that  same  fact  or  idea 
strikes  you  from  another  quarter.  It  seems  as  if  it 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     57 

had  passed  into  space  and  bounded  back  upon  you  as 
an  echo  from  the  blank  wall  that  shuts  in  the  world  of 
thought.  Yet  no  possible  connection  exists  between 
the  two  channels  by  which  the  thought  or  the  fact 
arrived.  Let  me  give  an  infinitesimal  illustration. 

One  of  the  Boys  mentioned,  the  other  evening,  in 
the  course  of  a  very  pleasant  poem  he  read  us,  a  little 
trick  of  the  Commons-table  boarders,  which  I,  nour 
ished  at  the  parental  board,  had  never  heard  of. 
Young  fellows  being  always  hungry  —  Allow  me  to 
stop  dead-short,  in  order  to  utter  an  aphorism  which 
has  been  forming  itself  in  one  of  the  blank  interior 
spaces  of  my  intelligence,  like  a  crystal  in  the  cavity 
of  a  geode. 

Aphorism  by  the  Professor. 

In  order  to  know  whether  a  human  being  is  young  or 
old,  offer  it  food  of  different  kinds  at  short  intervals. 
If  young,  it  will  eat  anything  at  any  hour  of  the  day 
or  night.  If  old,  it  observes  stated  periods,  and  you 
might  as  well  attempt  to  regulate  the  time  of  high- 
water  to  suit  a  fishing-party  as  to  change  these  periods. 

The  crucial  experiment  is  this.  Offer  a  bulky  and 
boggy  bun  to  the  suspected  individual  just  ten  minutes 
before  dinner.  If  this  is  eagerly  accepted  and  de 
voured,  the  fact  of  youth  is  established.  If  the  sub 
ject  of  the  question  starts  back  and  expresses  surprise 
and  incredulity,  as  if  you  could  not  possibly  be  in 
earnest,  the  fact  of  maturity  is  no  less  clear. 

—  Excuse  me,  —  I  return  to  my  story  of  the  Com 
mons-table.  —  Young  fellows  being  always  hungry, 
and  tea  and  dry  toast  being  the  meagre  fare  of  the 
evening  meal,  it  was  a  trick  of  some  of  the  Boys  to 


58     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

impale  a  slice  of  meat  upon  a  fork,  at  dinner-time, 
and  stick  the  fork  holding  it  beneath  the  table,  so 
that  they  could  get  it  at  tea-time.  The  dragons  that 
guarded  this  table  of  the  Hesperides  found  out  the 
trick  at  last,  and  kept  a  sharp  look-out  for  missing 
forks ;  —  they  knew  where  to  find  one,  if  it  was  not  in 
its  place.  —  Now  the  odd  thing  was,  that,  after  wait 
ing  so  many  years  to  hear  of  this  college  trick,  I 
should  hear  it  mentioned  a  second  time  within  the 
same  twenty -four  hours  by  a  college  youth  of  the  pres 
ent  generation.  Strange,  but  true.  And  so  it  has 
happened  to  me  and  to  every  person,  often  and  often, 
to  be  hit  in  rapid  succession  by  these  twinned  facts  or 
thoughts,  as  if  they  were  linked  like  chain-shot. 

I  was  going  to  leave  the  simple  reader  to  wonder 
over  this,  taking  it  as  an  unexplained  marvel.  I 
think,  however,  I  will  turn  over  a  furrow  of  subsoil  in 
it.  —  The  explanation  is,  of  course,  that  in  a  great 
many  thoughts  there  must  be  a  few  coincidences,  and 
these  instantly  arrest  our  attention.  Now  we  shall 
probably  never  have  the  least  idea  of  the  enormous 
number  of  impressions  which  pass  through  our  con 
sciousness,  until  in  some  future  life  we  see  the  photo 
graphic  record  of  our  thoughts  and  the  stereoscopic 
picture  of  our  actions.  There  go  more  pieces  to 
make  up  a  conscious  life  or  a  living  body  than  you 
think  for.  Why,  some  of  you  were  surprised  when 
a  friend  of  mine  told  you  there  were  fifty-eight  sep 
arate  pieces  in  a  fiddle.  How  many  "swimming 
glands  "  —  solid,  organized,  regularly  formed,  rounded 
disks  taking  an  active  part  in  all  your  vital  processes, 
part  and  parcel,  each  one  of  them,  of  your  corporeal 
being  —  do  you  suppose  are  whirled  along,  like  peb 
bles  in  a  stream,  with  the  blood  which  warms  your 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     59 

• 

frame  and  colors  your  cheeks?  —  A  noted  German 
physiologist  spread  out  a  minute  drop  of  blood,  under 
the  microscope,  in  narrow  streaks,  and  counted  the 
globules,  and  then  made  a  calculation.  The  counting 
by  the  micrometer  took  him  a  week.  —  You  have,  my 
full-grown  friend,  of  these  little  couriers  in  crimson 
or  scarlet  livery,  running  on  your  vital  errands  day 
and  night  as  long  as  you  live,  sixty-five  billions,  five 
hundred  and  seventy  thousand  millions.  Errors  ex- 
cepted.  —  Did  I  hear  some  gentleman  say,  "  Doubt 
ed?  "  —  I  am  the  Professor.  I  sit  in  my  chair  with  a 
petard  under  it  that  will  blow  me  through  the  sky- 
t  light  of  my  lecture-room,  if  I  do  not  know  what  I  am 
talking  about  and  whom  I  am  quoting. 

Now,  my  dear  friends,  who  are  putting  your  hands 
to  your  foreheads,  and  saying  to  yourselves  that  you 
feel  a  little  confused,  as  if  you  had  been  waltzing  un 
til  things  began  to  whirl  slightly  round  you,  is  it  pos 
sible  that  you  do  not  clearly  apprehend  the  exact  con 
nection  of  all  that  I  have  been  saying,  and  its  bearing 
on  what  is  now  to  come?  Listen,  then.  The  number 
of  these  living  elements  in  our  bodies  illustrates  the 
incalculable  multitude  of  our  thoughts ;  the  number  of 
our  thoughts  accounts  for  those  frequent  coincidences 
spoken  of;  these  coincidences  in  the  world  of  thought 
illustrate  those  which  we  constantly  observe  in  the 
world  of  outward  events,  of  which  the  presence  of  the 
young  girl  now  at  our  table,  and  proving  to  be  the 
daughter  of  an  old  acquaintance  some  of  us  may  re 
member,  is  the  special  example  which  led  me  through 
this  labyrinth  of  reflections,  and  finally  lands  me  at 
the  commencement  of  this  young  girl's  story,  which, 
as  I  said,  I  have  found  the  time  and  felt  the  interest 
to  learn  something  of,  and  which  I  think  I  can  tell 


60     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

• 

without  wronging  the  unconscious  subject  of  my  brief 
delineation. 

IRIS. 

You  remember,  perhaps,  in  some  papers  published 
awhile  ago,  an  odd  poem  written  by  an  old  Latin 
tutor?  He  brought  up  at  the  verb  amo,  I  love,  as  all 
of  us  do,  and  by  and  by  Nature  opened  her  great  liv 
ing  dictionary  for  him  at  the  word  filia,  a  daughter. 
The  poor  man  was  greatly  perplexed  in  choosing  a 
name  for  her.  Lucretia  and  Virginia  were  the  first 
that  he  thought  of;  but  then  came  up  those  pictured 
stories  of  Titus  Livius,  which  he  could  never  read, 
without  crying,  though  he  had  read  them  a  hundred 
times. 

—  Lucretia  sending  for  her  husband  and  her  father, 
each  to  bring  one  friend  with  him,  and  awaiting  them 
in  her  chamber.  To  them  her  wrongs  briefly.  Let 
them  see  to  the  wretch,  —  she  will  take  care  of  herself. 
Then  the  hidden  knife  flashes  out  and  sinks  into  her 
heart.  She  slides  from  her  seat,  and  falls  dying. 
"Her  husband  and  her  father  cry  aloud."  —  No, — 
not  Lucretia. 

-  Virginius,  —  a  brown  old  soldier,  father  of  a  nice 
girl.  She  engaged  to  a  very  promising  young  man. 
Decemvir  Appius  takes  a  violent  fancy  to  her,  —  must 
have  her  at  any  rate.  Hires  a  lawyer  to  present  the 
arguments  in  favor  of  the  view  that  she  was  another 
man's  daughter.  There  used  to  be  lawyers  in  Rome 
that  would  do  such  things.  —  All  right.  There  are 
two  sides  to  everything.  Audi  alteram  partem. 
The  legal  gentleman  has  no  opinion,  —  he  only  states 
the  evidence.  —  A  doubtful  case.  Let  the  young  lady 
be  under  the  protection  of  the  Honorable  Decemvir 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     61 

until  it  can  be  looked  up  thoroughly.  —  Father  thinks 
it  best,  on  the  whole,  to  give  in.  Will  explain  the 
matter,  if  the  young  lady  and  her  maid  will  step  this 
way.  That  is  the  explanation,  —  a  stab  with  a  butch 
er's  knife,  snatched  from  a  stall,  meant  for  other  lambs 
than  this  poor  bleeding  Virginia  ! 

The  old  man  thought  over  the  story.  Then  he  must 
have  one  look  at  the  original.  So  he  took  down  the 
first  volume  and  read  it  over.  When  he  came  to  that 
part  where  it  tells  how  the  young  gentleman  she  was 
engaged  to  and  a  friend  of  his  took  up  the  poor  girPs 
bloodless  shape  and  carried  it  through  the  street,  and 
how  all  the  women  followed,  wailing,  and  asking  if  that 
was  what  their  daughters  were  coming  to,  —  if  that 
was  what  they  were  to  get  for  being  good  girls,  —  he 
melted  down  into  his  accustomed  tears  of  pity  and 
grief,  and,  through  them  all,  of  delight  at  the  charm 
ing  Latin  of  the  narrative.  But  it  was  impossible  to 
call  his  child  Virginia.  He  could  never  look  at  her 
without  thinking  she  had  a  knife  sticking  in  her  bosom. 

Dido  would  be  a  good  name,  and  a  fresh  one.  She 
was  a  queen,  and  the  founder  of  a  great  city.  Her 
story  had  been  immortalized  by  the  greatest  of  poets, 
• — for  the  old  Latin  tutor  clove  to  "Virgilius  Maro," 
as  he  called  him,  as  closely  as  ever  Dante  did  in  his 
memorable  journey.  So  he  took  down  his  Virgil,  — 
it  was  the  smooth-leafed,  open-lettered  quarto  of  Bas- 
kerville,  —  and  began  reading  the  loves  and  mishaps 
of  Dido.  It  would  n't  do.  A  lady  who  had  not 
learned  discretion  by  experience,  and  came  to  an  evil 
end.  He  shook  his  head,  as  he  sadly  repeated, 

" misera  ante  diem,  subitoque  accensa  furore  ; " 

but  when  he  came  to  the  Hues, 


62     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

"  Ergo  Iris  croceis  per  ccelum  roscida  pennis 
Mille  traheiis  varies  adverse  Sole  colores," 

he  jumped  up  with  a  great  exclamation,  which  the 
particular  recording  angel  who  heard  it  pretended  not 
to  understand,  or  it  might  have  gone  hard  with  the 
Latin  tutor  some  time  or  other. 

"Iris  shall  be  her  name!"  —he  said.  So  her 
name  was  Iris. 

—  The  natural  end  of  a  tutor  is  to  perish  by  star 
vation.  It  is  only  a  question  of  time,  just  as  with  the 
burning  of  college  libraries.  These  all  burn  up  sooner 
or  later,  provided  they  are  not  housed  in  brick  or 
stone  and  iron.  I  don't  mean  that  you  will  see  in  the 
registry  of  deaths  that  this  or  that  particular  tutor 
died  of  well-marked,  uncomplicated  starvation.  They 
may,  even,  in  extreme  cases,  be  carried  off  by  a  thin, 
watery  kind  of  apoplexy,  which  sounds  very  well  in 
the  returns,  but  means  little  to  those  who  know  that  it 
is  only  debility  settling  on  the  head.  Generally,  how 
ever,  they  fade  and  waste  away  under  various  pre 
texts,  —  calling  it  dyspepsia,  consumption,  and  so  on, 
to  put  a  decent  appearance  upon  the  case  and  keep  up 
the  credit  of  the  family  and  the  institution  where  they 
have  passed  through  the  successive  stages  of  inanition. 

In  some  cases  it  takes  a  great  many  years  to  kill  a 
tutor  by  the  process  in  question.  You  see  they  do 
get  food  and  clothes  and  fuel,  in  appreciable  quanti 
ties,  such  as  they  are.  You  will  even  notice  rows  of 
books  in  their  rooms,  and  a  picture  or  two,  —  things 
that  look  as  if  they  had  surplus  money ;  but  these  su 
perfluities  are  the  water  of  crystallization  to  scholars, 
and  you  can  never  get  them  away  till  the  poor  fellows 
effloresce  into  dust.  Do  not  be  deceived.  The  tutor 
breakfasts  on  coffee  made  of  beans,  edulcorated  with 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     63 

milk  watered  to  the  verge  of  transparency ;  his  mutton 
is  tough  and  elastic,  up  to  the  moment  when  it  becomes 
tired  out  and  tasteless ;  his  coal  is  a  sullen,  sulphurous 
anthracite,  which  rusts  into  ashes,  rather  than  burns, 
in  the  shallow  grate ;  his  flimsy  broadcloth  is  too  thin 
for  winter  and  too  thick  for  summer.  The  greedy 
lungs  of  fifty  hot-blooded  boys  suck  the  oxygen  from 
the  air  he  breathes  in  his  recitation-room.  In  short, 
he  undergoes  a  process  of  gentle  and  gradual  starva 
tion. 

—  The  mother  of  little  Iris  was  not  called  Elec- 
tra,  like  hers  of  the  old  story,  neither  was  her  grand 
father  Oceanus.  Her  blood-name,  which  she  gave 
away  with  her  heart  to  the  Latin  tutor,  was  a  plain 
old  English  one,  and  her  water-name  was  Hannah, 
beautiful  as  recalling  the  mother  of  Samuel,  and  ad 
mirable  as  reading  equally  well  from  the  initial  let 
ter  forwards  and  from  the  terminal  letter  backwards. 
The  poor  lady,  seated  with  her  companion  at  the  chess 
board  of  matrimony,  had  but  just  pushed  forward  her 
one  little  white  pawn  upon  an  empty  square,  when  the 
Black  Knight,  that  cares  nothing  for  castles  or  kings 
or  queens,  swooped  down  upon  her  and  swept  her  from 
the  larger  board  of  life. 

The  old  Latin  tutor  put  a  modest  blue  stone  at  the 
head  of  his  late  companion,  with  her  name  and  age 
and  Eheu  !  upon  it,  —  a  smaller  one  at  her  feet,  with 
initials;  and  left  her  by  herself,  to  be  rained  and 
snowed  on,  —  which  is  a  hard  thing  to  do  for  those 
whom  we  have  cherished  tenderly. 

About  the  time  that  the  lichens,  fallirg  on  the 
stone,  like  drops  of  water,  had  spread  into  fair,  round 
rosettes,  the  tutor  had  starved  into  a  slight  cough. 
Then  he  began  to  draw  the  buckle  of  his  black  trou- 


64     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sers  a  little  tighter,  and  took  in  another  reef  in  his 
never-ample  waistcoat.  His  temples  got  a  little  hol 
low,  and  the  contrasts  of  color  in  his  cheeks  more 
vivid  than  of  old.  After  a  while  his  walks  fatigued 
him,  and  he  was  tired,  and  breathed  hard  after  going 
up  a  flight  or  two  of  stairs.  Then  came  on  other 
marks  of  inward  trouble  and  general  waste,  which  he 
spoke  of  to  his  physician  as  peculiar,  and  doubtless 
owing  to  accidental  causes;  to  all  which  the  doctor 
listened  with  deference,  as  if  it  had  not  been  the  old 
story  that  one  in  five  or  six  of  mankind  in  temperate 
climates  tells,  or  has  told  for  him,  as  if  it  were  some 
thing  new.  As  the  doctor  went  out,  he  said  to  him 
self, —  "On  the  rail  at  last.  Accommodation  train. 
A  good  many  stops,  but  will  get  to  the  station  by  and 
by."  So  the  doctor  wrote  a  recipe  with  the  astrologi 
cal  sign  of  Jupiter  before  it,  (just  as  your  own  physi 
cian  does,  inestimable  reader,  as  you  will  see,  if  you 
look  at  his  next  prescription,)  and  departed,  saying 
he  would  look  in  occasionally.  After  this,  the  Latin 
tutor  began  the  usual  course  of  "getting  better,"  until 
he  got  so  much  better  that  his  face  was  very  sharp, 
and  when  he  smiled,  three  crescent  lines  showed  at 
each  side  of  his  lips,  and  when  he  spoke,  it  was  in  a 
muffled  whisper,  and  the  white  of  his  eye  glistened  as 
pearly  as  the  purest  porcelain,  —  so  much  better,  that 
he  hoped  —  by  spring  —  he—  —might  be  able  —  to 

—  attend to  his  class  again. — But   he  was 

recommended  not  to  expose  himself,  and  so  kept  his 
chamber,  and  occasionally,  not  having  anything  to  do, 
his  bed.  The  unmarried  sister  with  whom  he  lived 
took  care  of  him ;  and  the  child,  now  old  enough  to  be 
manageable  and  even  •  useful  in  trifling  offices,  sat  in 
the  chamber,  or  played  about. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     65 

Things  could  not  go  on  so  forever,  of  course.  One 
morning  his  face  was  sunken  and  his  hands  were  very, 
very  cold.  He  was  "better,"  he  whispered,  but  sadly 
and  faintly.  After  a  while  he  grew  restless  and 
seemed  a  little  wandering.  His  mind  ran  on  his  clas 
sics,  and  fell  back  on  the  Latin  grammar. 

"Iris!"  he  said,—  "filiola  mea!"  —  The  child 
knew  this  meant  my  dear  little  daughter  as  well  as  if 
it  had  been  English.  —  "Rainbow!  "  —for  he  would 
translate  her  name  at  times,  —  "come  to  me,  — veni" 
—  and  his  lips  went  on  automatically,  and  mur 
mured,  "  vel  venito  1 "  -  The  child  came  and  sat  by  his 
bedside  and  took  his  hand,  which  she  could  not  warm, 
but  which  shot  its  rays  of  cold  all  through  her  slender 
frame.  But  there  she  sat,  looking  steadily  at  him. 
Presently  he  opened  his  lips  feebly,  and  whispered, 
" Moribundus."  She  did  not  know  what  that  meant, 
but  she  saw  that  there  was  something  new  and  sad. 
So  she  began  to  cry;  but  presently  remembering  an 
old  book  that  seemed  to  comfort  him  at  times,  got  up 
and  brought  a  Bible  in  the  Latin  version,  called  the 
Vulgate.  "Open  it,"  he  said,  —  "I  will  read, — 
segnius  irritant, — don't  put  the  light  out, — ah! 
hceret  lateri,  —  I  am  going,  —  vale,  vale,  vale,  good 
bye,  good-bye,  —  the  Lord  take  care  of  my  child !  — 

Domine,  audi vel  audito!"  His  face  whitened 

suddenly,  and  he  lay  still,  with  open  eyes  and  mouth. 
He  had  taken  his  last  degree. 

—  Little  Miss  Iris  could  not  be  said  to  begin  life 
with  a  very  brilliant  rainbow  over  her,  in  a  wojrldly 
point  of  view.  A  limited  wardrobe  of  man's  attire, 
such  as  poor  tutors  wear,  —  a  few  good  books,  princi 
pally  classics,  —  a  print  or  two,  and  a  plaster  model 
of  the  Pantheon,  with  some  pieces  of  furniture  which 


66     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

had  seen  service,  — these,  and  a  child's  heart  full  of 
tearful  recollections  and  strange  doubts  and  questions, 
alternating  with  the  cheap  pleasures  which  are  the 
anodynes  of  childish  grief;  such  were  the  treasures 
she  inherited.  —  No,  —  I  forgot.  With  that  kindly 
sentiment  which  all  of  us  feel  for  old  men's  first  chil 
dren,  —  frost-flowers  of  the  early  winter  season,  — 
the  old  tutor's  students  had  remembered  him  at  a  time 
when  he  was  laughing  and  crying  with  his  new  paren 
tal  emotions,  and  running  to  the  side  of  the  plain  crib 
in  which  his  alter  ego,  as  he  used  to  say,  was  swing 
ing,  to  hang  over  the  little  heap  of  stirring  clothes, 
from  which  looked  the  minute,  red,  downy,  still,  round 
face,  with  unfixed  eyes  and  working  lips,  —  in  that 
unearthly  gravity  which  has  never  yet  been  broken 
by  a  smile,  and  which  gives  to  the  earliest  moon-year 
or  two  of  an  infant's  life  the  character  of  a  first  old 
age,  to  counterpoise  that  second  childhood  which  there 
is  one  chance  in  a  dozen  it  may  reach  by  and  by. 
The  boys  had  remembered  the  old  man  and  young  fa 
ther  at  that  tender  period  of  his  harjd,  dry  life.  There 
came  to  him  a  fair,  silver  goblet,  embossed  with  clas 
sical  figures,  and  bearing  on  a  shield  the  graver  words, 
Ex  dono  pupillorum.  The  handle  on  its  side  showed 
what  use  the  boys  had  meant  it  for;  and  a  kind  letter 
in  it,  written  with  the  best  of  feeling,  in  the  worst  of 
Latin,  pointed  delicately  to  its  destination.  Out  of 
this  silver  vessel,  after  a  long,  desperate,  strangling 
cry,  which  marked  her  first  great  lesson  in  the  reali 
ties  of  life,  the  child  took  the  blue  milk,  such  as  poor 
tutors  and  their  children  get,  tempered  with  water, 
and  sweetened  a  little,  so  as  to  bring  it  nearer  the 
standard  established  by  the  touching  indulgence  and 
partiality  of  Nature,  —  who  has  mingled  an  extra 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      67 

allowance  of  sugar  in  the  blameless  food  of  the  child 
at  its  mother's  breast,  as  compared  with  that  of  its 
infant  brothers  and  sisters  of  the  bovine  race. 

But  a  willow  will  grow  in  baked  sand  wet  with  rain 
water.  An  air-plant  will  grow  by  feeding  on  the 
winds.  Nay,  those  huge  forests  that  overspread  great 
continents  have  built  themselves  up  mainly  from  the 
air-currents  with  which  they  are  always  battling. 
The  oak  is  but  a  foliated  atmospheric  crystal  deposited 
from  the  aerial  ocean  that  holds  the  future  vegetable 
world  in  solution.  The  storm  that  tears  its  leaves  has 
paid  tribute  to  its  strength,  and  it  breasts  the  tornado 
clad  in  the  spoils  of  a  hundred  hurricanes. 

Poor  little  Iris!  What  had  she  in  common  with 
the  great  oak  in  the  shadow  of  which  we  are  losing 
sight  of  her?  —  She  lived  and  grew  like  that,  — this 
was  all.  The  blue  milk  ran  into  her  veins  and  filled 
them  with  thin,  pure  blood.  Her  skin  was  fair,  with  a 
faint  tinge,  such  as  the  white  rosebud  shows  before  it 
opens.  The  doctor  who  had  attended  her  father  was 
afraid  her  aunt  would  hardly  be  able  to  "raise  "  her, 

—  "delicate  child,"  —  hoped  she  was  not  consumptive, 

—  thought  there  was  a  fair  chance   she  would  take 
after  her  father. 

A  very  forlorn-looking  person,  dressed  in  black, 
with  a  white  neckcloth,  sent  her  a  memoir  of  a  child 
who  died  at  the  age  of  two  years  and  eleven  months, 
after  having  fully  indorsed  all  the  doctrines  of  the 
particular  persuasion  to  which  he  not  only  belonged 
himself,  but  thought  it  very  shameful  that  everybody 
else  did  not  belong.  What  with  foreboding  looks  and 
dreary  death-bed  stories,  it  was  a  wonder  the  child 
made  out  to  live  through  it.  It  saddened  her  early 
years,  of  course,  —  it  distressed  her  tender  soul  with 


68     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

thoughts  which,  as  they  cannot  be  fully  taken  in, 
should  be  sparingly  used  as  instruments  of  torture  to 
break  down  the  natural  cheerfulness  of  a  healthy 
child,  or,  what  is  infinitely  worse,  to  cheat  a  dying 
one  out  of  the  kind  illusions  with  which  the  Father  of 
All  has  strewed  its  downward  path. 

The  child  would  have  died,  no  doubt,  and,  if  prop 
erly  managed,  might  have  added  another  to  the  long 
catalogue  of  wasting  children  who  have  been  as  cruelly 
played  upon  by  spiritual  physiologists,  often  with  the 
best  intentions,  as  ever  the  subject  of  a  rare  disease 
by  the  curious 'students  of  science. 

Fortunately  for  her,  however,  a  wise  instinct  had 
guided  the  late  Latin  tutor  in  the  selection  of  the  part 
ner  of  his  life,  and  the  future  mother  of  his  child. 
The  deceased  tutoress  was  a  tranquil,  smooth  woman, 
easily  nourished,  as  such  people  are,  —  a  quality  which 
is  inestimable  in  a  tutor's  wife,  — and  so  it  happened 
that  the  daughter  inherited  enough  vitality  from  the 
mother  to  live  through  childhood  and  infancy  and 
fight  her  way  towards  womanhood,  in  spite  of  the  ten 
dencies  she  derived  from  her  other  parent. 

-  Two  and  two  do  not  always  make  four,  in  this 
matter  of  hereditary  descent  of  qualities.  Sometimes 
they  make  three,  and  sometimes  five.  It  seems  as  if 
the  parental  traits  at  one  time  showed  separate,  at 
another  blended,  —  that  occasionally  the  force  of  two 
natures  is  represented  in  the  derivative  one  by  a 
diagonal  of  greater  value  than  either  original  line  of 
living  movement,  —  that  sometimes  there  is  a  loss  of 
vitality  hardly  to  be  accounted  for,  and  again  a  for- 
-ward  impulse  of  variable  intensity  in  some  new  and 
unforeseen  direction. 

So  it  was  with  this  child.     She  had  glanced  off  from 


THE    PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     69 

her  parental  probabilities  at  an  unexpected  angle. 
Instead  of  taking  to  classical  learning  like  her  father, 
or  sliding  quietly  into  household  duties  like  her  mother, 
she  broke  out  early  in  efforts  that  pointed  in  the  direc 
tion  of  Art.  As  soon  as  she  could  hold  a  pencil  she 
began  to  sketch  outlines  of  objects  round  her  with  a 
certain  air  and  spirit.  Very  extraordinary  horses,  but 
their  legs  looked  as  if  they  could  move.  Birds  un 
known  to  Audubon,  yet  flying,  as  it  were,  with  a  rush. 
Men  with  impossible  legs,  which  did  yet  seem  to  have 
a  vital  connection  with  their  most  improbable  bodies. 
By-and-by  the  doctor,  on  his  beast,  —  an  old  man 
with  a  face  looking  as  if  Time  had  kneaded  it  like 
dough  with  his  knuckles,  with  a  rhubarb  tint  and 
flavor  pervading  himself  and  his  sorrel  horse  and  all 
their  appurtenances.  A  dreadful  old  man !  Be  sure 
she  did  not  forget  those  saddle-bags  that  held  the 
detestable  bottles  out  of  which  he  used  to  shake  those 
loathsome  powders  which,  to  virgin  childish  palates 
that  find  heaven  in  strawberries  and  peaches,  are  — 
Well,  I  suppose  I  had  better  stop.  Only  she  wished 
she  was  dead  sometimes  when  she  heard  him  coming. 
On  the  next  leaf  would  figure  the  gentleman  with  the 
black  coat  and  white  cravat,  as  he  looked  when  he 
came  and  entertained  her  with  stories  concerning  the 
death  of  various  little  children  about  her  age,  to 
encourage  her,  as  that  wicked  Mr.  Arouet  said  about 
shooting  Admiral  Byng.  Then  she  would  take  her 
pencil,  and  with  a  few  scratches  there  would  be  the 
outline  of  a  child,  in  which  you  might  notice  how  one 
sudden  sweep  gave  the  chubby  cheek,  and  two  dots 
darted  at  the  paper  looked  like  real  eyes. 

By-and-by  she  went  to  school,  and  caricatured  the 
schoolmaster  on  the  leaves  of  her  grammars  and  geo- 


70      THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

graphics,  ancl  drew  the  faces  of  her  companions,  and, 
from  time  to  time,  heads  and  figures  from  her  fancy, 
with  large  eyes,  far  apart,  like  those  of  Raffaelle's 
mothers  and  children,  sometimes  with  wild  floating 
hair,  and  then  with  wings  and  heads  thrown  back  in 
ecstasy.  This  was  at  about  twelve  years  old,  as  the 
dates  of  these  drawings  show,  and,  therefore,  three  or 
four  years  before  she  came  among  us.  Soon  after  this 
time,  the  ideal  figures  began  to  take  the  place  of  por 
traits  and  caricatures,  and  a  new  feature  appeared 
in  her  drawing-books  in  the  form  of  fragments  of 
verse  and  short  poems. 

It  was  dull  work,  of  course,  for  such  a  young  girl 
to  live  with  an  old  spinster  and  go  to  a  village  school. 
Her  books  bore  testimony  to  this ;  for  there  was  a  look 
of  sadness  in  the  faces  she  drew,  and  a  sense  of  weari 
ness  and  longing  for  some  imaginary  conditions  of 
blessedness  or  other,  which  began  to  be  painful.  She 
might  have  gone  through  this  flowering  of  the  soul, 
and,  casting  her  petals,  subsided  into  a  sober,  human 
berry,  but  for  the  intervention  of  friendly  assistance 
and  counsel. 

In  the  town  where  she  lived  was  a  lady  of  honorable 
condition,  somewhat  past  middle  age,  who  was  pos 
sessed  of  pretty  ample  means,  of  cultivated  tastes,  of 
excellent  principles,  of  exemplary  character,  and  of 
more  than  common  accomplishments.  The  gentleman 
in  black  broadcloth  and  white  neckerchief  only  echoed 
the  common  voice  about  her,  when  he  called  her,  after 
enjoying,  beneath  her  hospitable  roof,  an  excellent 
cup  of  tea,  with  certain  elegancies  and  luxuries  he  was 
unaccustomed  to,  "The  Model  of  all  the  Virtues." 

She  deserved  this  title  as  well  as  almost  any  woman. 
She  did  really  bristle  with  moral  excellences.  Men- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.       7l 

tion  any  good  thing  she  had  not  done ;  I  should  like  to 
see  you  try !  There  was  no  handle  of  weakness  to  take 
hold  of  her  by ;  she  was  as  unseizable,  except  in  her 
totality,  as  a  billiard-ball;  and  on  the  broad,  green, 
terrestrial  table,  where  she  had  been  knocked  about, 
like  all  of  us,  by  the  cue  of  Fortune,  she  glanced  from 
every  human  contact,  and  "caromed"  from  one  rela 
tion  to  another,  and  rebounded  from  the  stuffed  cush 
ion  of  temptation,  with  such  exact  and  perfect  angular 
movements,  that  the  Enemy's  corps  of  Reporters  had 
long  given  up  taking  notes  of  her  conduct,  as  there 
was  no  chance  for  their  master. 

What  an  admirable  person  for  the  patroness  and 
directress  of  a  slightly  self-willed  child,  with  the  light 
ning  zigzag  line  of  genius  running  like  a  glittering 
vein  through  the  marble  whiteness  of  her  virgin  na 
ture!  One  of  the  lady-patroness's  peculiar  virtues 
was  calmness.  She  was  resolute  and  strenuous,  but 
still.  You  could  depend  on  her  for  every  duty;  she 
was  as  true  as  steel.  She  was  kind-hearted  and  ser 
viceable  in  all  the  relations  of  life.  She  had  more 
sense,  more  knowledge,  more  conversation,  as  well  as 
more  goodness,  than  all  the  partners  you  have  waltzed 
with  this  winter  put  together. 

Yet  no  man  was  known  to  have  loved  her,  or  even 
to  have  offered  himself  to  her  in  marriage.  It  was 
a  great  wonder.  I  am  very  anxious  to  vindicate  my 
character  as  a  philosopher  and  an  observer  of  Nature 
by  accounting  for  this  apparently  extraordinary  fact. 

You  may  remember  certain  persons  who  have  the 
misfortune  of  presenting  to  the  friends  whom  they 
meet  a  cold,  damp  hand.  There  are  states  of  mind 
in  which  a  contact  of  this  kind  has  a  depressing  effect 
on  the  vital  powers  that  makes  us  insensible  to  all  the 


72      THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

virtues  and  graces  of  the  proprietor  of  one  of  these 
life- absorbing  organs.  When  they  touch  us,  virtue 
passes  out  of  us,  and  we  feel  as  if  our  electricity  had 
been  drained  by  a  powerful  negative  battery,  carried 
about  by  an  overgrown  human  torpedo. 

"The  Model  of  aU  the  Virtues"  had  a  pair  of 
searching  eyes  as  clear  as  Wenhani  ice ;  but  they  were 
slower  to  melt  than  that  fickle  jewelry.  Her  features 
disordered  themselves  slightly  at  times  in  a  surface- 
tfmile,  but  never  broke  loose  from  their  corners  and 
indulged  in  the  riotous  tumult  of  a  laugh,  —  which, 
I  take  it,  is  the  mob-law  of  the  features,  —  and  pro 
priety  the  magistrate  who  reads  the  riot-act.  She 
carried  the  brimming  cup  of  her  inestimable  virtues 
with  a  cautious,  steady  hand,  and  an  eye  always  on 
them,  to  see  that  they  did  not  spill.  Then  she  was  an 
admirable  judge  of  character.  Her  mind  was  a  per 
fect  laboratory  of  tests  and  reagents;  every  syllable 
you  put  into  breath  went  into  her  intellectual  eudiom 
eter,  and  all  your  thoughts  were  recorded  on  litmus- 
paper.  I  think  there  has  rarely  been  a  more  admi 
rable  woman.  Of  course,  Miss  Iris  was  immensely  and 
passionately  attached  to  her.  —  "Well,  —  these  are  two 
highly  oxygenated  adverbs,  —  grateful,  —  suppose  we 
say,  —  yes,  —  gratef id,  dutiful,  obedient  to  her  wishes 
for  the  most  part,  —  perhaps  not  quite  up  to  the  con 
cert  pitch  of  such  a  perfect  orchestra  of  the  virtues. 

We  must  have  a  weak  spot  or  two  in  a  character 
before  we  can  love  it  much.  People  that  do  not 
laugh  or  cry,  or  take  more  of  anything  than  is  good 
for  them,  or  use  anything  but  dictionary-words,  are 
admirable  subjects  for  biographies.  But  we  don't 
always  care  most  for  those  flat-pattern  flowers  that 
press  best  in  the  herbarium. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.     73 

This  immaculate  woman,  — why  could  n't  she  have 
a  fault  or  two?  Is  n't  there  any  old  whisper  which 
will  tarnish  that  wearisome  aureole  of  saintly  perfec 
tion?  Does  n't  she  carry  a  lump  of  opium  in  her 
pocket?  Is  n't  her  cologne -bottle  replenished  oftener 
than  its  legitimate  use  would  require?  It  would  be 
such  a  comfort  1 

Not  for  the  world  would  a  young  creature  like  Iris 
have  let  such  words  escape  her,  or  such  thoughts 
pass  through  her  mind.  Whether  at  the  bottom  of 
her  soul  lies  any  uneasy  consciousness  of  an  oppres 
sive  presence,  it  is  hard  to  say,  until  we  know  more 
about  her.  Iris  sits  between  the  Little  Gentleman 
and  the  "Model  of  all  the  Virtues,"  as  the  black- 
coated  personage  called  her.  —  I  will  watch  them  all. 

—  Here  I  stop  for  the  present.     What  the  Pro 
fessor  said  has  had  to  make  way  this  time  for  what  he 
saw  and  heard. 

—  And  now  you  may  read  these  lines,  which  were 
written  for  gentle  souls  who  love  music,  and  read  in 
even  tones,  and,  perhaps,  with  something  like  a  smile 
upon  the  reader's  lips,  at  a  meeting  where  these  musi 
cal  friends  had  gathered.     Whether  they  were  written 
with  smiles  or  not,  you  can  guess  better  after  you  have 
read  them. 


THE  OPENING  OF  THE  PIANO. 

In  the  little  southern  parlor  of  the  house  you  may  have  seen 
With  the  gambrel-roof,  and  the  gable  looking  westward  to  the 

green, 

At  the  side  toward  the  sunset,  with  the  window  on  its  right, 
Stood  the  London-made  piano  I  am  dreaming  of  to-night. 


74      THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Ah  me  !  how  I  remember  the  evening  when  it  came  ! 

What  a  cry  of  eager  voices,  what  a  group  of  cheeks  in  flame, 

When  the  wondrous  box  was  opened  that  had  come  from  over 

seas, 
With  its  smell  of  mastic-varnish  and  its  flash  of  ivory  keys  ! 

Then  the  children  all  grew  fretful  in  the  restlessness  of  joy, 
For  the  boy  would  push  his  sister,  and  the  sister  crowd  the  boy, 
Till  the  father  asked  for  quiet  in  his  grave  paternal  way, 
But  the  mother  hushed  the  tumult  with  the  words,  "  Now,  Mary, 
play." 

For  the  dear  soul  knew  that  music  was  a  very  sovereign  balm  ; 
She  had  sprinkled  it  over  Sorrow  and  seen  its  brow  grow  calm, 
In  the  days  of  slender  haspsichords  with  tapping  tiukling  quills, 
Or  carolling  to  her  spinet  with  its  thin  metallic  thrills. 

So  Mary,  the  household  minstrel,  who  always  loved  to  please, 
Sat  down  to  the  new  "  dementi,"  and  struck  the  glittering  keys. 
Hushed  were  the  children's  voices,  and  every  eye  grew  dim, 
As,  floating  from  lip  and  finger,  arose  the  "  Vesper  Hymn." 

—  Catharine,  child  of  a  neighbor,  curly  and  rosy-red, 
(Wedded  since,  and  a  widow,  —  something  like  ten  years  dead,) 
Hearing  a  gush  of  music  such  as  none  before, 

Steals  from  her  mother's  chamber  and  peeps  at  the  open  door. 

Just  as  the  "  Jubilate  "  in  threaded  whisper  dies, 

—  "  Open  it !  open  it,  lady  !  "  the  little  maiden  cries, 

(For  she  thought  't  was  a  singing  creature  caged  in  a  box  she 

heard,) 
"  Open  it  1  open  it,  lady  1  and  let  me  see  the  bird  !  " 


IV. 

I  don't  know  whether  our  literary  or  professional 
people  are  more  amiable  than  they  are  in  other  places, 
but  certainly  quarrelling  is  out  of  fashion  among  them. 
This  could  never  be,  if  they  were  in  the  habit  of  secret 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      75 

anonymous  puffing  of  each  other.  That  is  the  kind 
of  jinderground  machinery  which  manufactures  false 
reputations  and  genuine  hatreds.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  should  like  to  know  if  we  are  not  at  liberty  to  have  a 
good  time  together,  and  say  the  pleasantest  things  we 
can  think  of  to  each  other,  when  any  of  us  reaches  his 
thirtieth  or  fortieth  or  fiftieth  or  eightieth  birthday. 

We  don't  have  "scenes,"  I  warrant  you,  on  these 
occasions.  No  "  surprise  "  parties !  You  understand 
these,  of  course.  In  the  rural  districts,  where  scenic 
tragedy  and  melodrama  cannot  be  had,  as  in  the  city, 
at  the  expense  of  a  quarter  and  a  white  pocket-hand 
kerchief,  emotional  excitement  has  to  be  sought  in  the 
dramas  of  real  life.  Christenings,  weddings,  and 
funerals,  especially  the  latter,  are  the  main  depen 
dence;  but  babies,  brides,  and  deceased  citizens  can 
not  be  had  at  a  day's  notice.  Now,  then,  for  a  sur 
prise-party  ! 

A  bag  of  flour,  a  barrel  of  potatoes,  some  strings 
of  onions,  a  basket  of  apples,  a  big  cake  and  many 
little  cakes,  a  jug  of  lemonade,  a  purse  stuffed  with 
bills  of  the  more  modest  denominations,  may,  perhaps, 
do  well  enough  for  the  properties  in  one  of  these  pri 
vate  theatrical  exhibitions.  The  minister  of  the  par 
ish,  a  tender-hearted,  quiet,  hard-working  man,  living 
on  a  small  salary,  with  many  children,  sometimes 
pinched  to  feed  and  clothe  them,  praying  fervently 
every  day  to  be  blest  in  his  "basket  and  store,"  but 
sometimes  fearing  he  asks  amiss,  to  judge  by  the 
small  returns,  has  the  first  role,  —  not,  however,  by 
his  own  choice,  but  forced  upon  him.  The  minister's 
wife,  a  sharp-eyed,  unsentimental  body,  is  first  lady ; 
the  remaining  parts  by  the  rest  of  the  family.  If  they 
only  had  a  playbill,  it  would  run  thus :  — 


76     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ON  TUESDAY  NEXT 
WILL  BE  PRESENTED 

THE    AFFECTING   SCENE 

CALLED 

THE    SURPRISE-PARTY, 

OK 

THE   OVERCOME   FAMILY; 

WITH   THE  FOLLOWING   STRONG  CAST   OF  CHARACTERS. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Overcome,  by  the  Clergyman  of  this 
Parish. 

Mrs.  Overcome,  by  his  estimable  lady. 

Masters  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John  Over 
come, 

Misses  Dorcas,  Tabitha,  Rachel,  and  Hannah 
Overcome,  by  their  interesting  children. 

Peggy,  by  the  female  help. 

The  poor  man  is  really  grateful ;  —  it  is  a  most  wel 
come  and  unexpected  relief.  He  tries  to  express  his 
thanks,  —  his  voice  falters,  —  he  chokes,  —  and  bursts 
into  tears.  That  is  the  great  effect  of  the  evening. 
The  sharp-sighted  lady  cries  a  little  with  one  eye,  and 
counts  the  strings  of  onions,  and  the  rest  of  the  things, 
with  the  other.  The  children  stand  ready  for  a  spring 
at  the  apples.  The  female  help  weeps  after  the  noisy 
fashion  of  untutored  handmaids. 

Now  this  is  all  very  well  as  charity,  but  do  let  the 
kind  visitors  remember  they  get  their  money's  worth. 
If  you  pay  a  quarter  for  dry  crying,  done  by  a  second- 
rate  actor,  how  much  ought  you  to  pay  for  real  hot, 
wet  tears,  out  of  the  honest  eyes  of  a  gentleman  who 
is  not  acting,  but  sobbing  in  earnest? 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     77 

All  I  meant  to  say,  when  I  began,  was,  that  this 
was  not  a  surprise-party  where  I  read  these  few  lines 
that  follow :  — 

We  will  not  speak  of  years  to-night ; 

For  what  have  years  to  bring, 
But  larger  floods  of  love  and  light 

And  sweeter  songs  to  sing  ? 

We  will  not  drown  in  wordy  praise 

The  kindly  thoughts  that  rise  ; 
If  friendship  owns  one  tender  phrase, 

He  reads  it  in  our  eyes. 

We  need  not  waste  our  schoolboy  art 

To  gild  this  notch  of  time  ; 
Forgive  me,  if  my  wayward  heart 

Has  throbbed  in  artless  rhyme. 

Enough  for  him  the  silent  grasp 

That  knits  us  hand  in  hand, 
And  he  the  bracelet's  radiant  clasp 

That  locks  our  circling  band. 

Strength  to  his  hours  of  manly  toil ! 

Peace  to  his  starlit  dreams  ! 
Who  loves  alike  the  furrowed  soil, 

The  music-haunted  streams  ! 

Sweet  smiles  to  keep  forever  bright 

The  sunshine  on  his  lips, 
And  faith,  that  sees  the  ring  of  light 

Round  Nature's  last  eclipse  ! 

—  One  of  our  boarders  has  been  talking  in  such 
strong  language  that  I  am  almost  afraid  to  report  it. 
However,  as  he  seems  to  be  really  honest  and  is  so 
very  sincere  in  his  local  prejudices,  I  don't  believe 
anybody  will  be  very  angry  with  him. 


78     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

It  is  here,  Sir !  right  here !  —  said  the  little  deformed 
gentleman,  —  in  this  old  new  city  of  Boston,  —  this 
remote  provincial  corner  of  a  provincial  nation,  that 
the  Battle  of  the  Standard  is  fighting,  and  was  fight 
ing  before  we  were  born,  and  will  be  fighting  when 
we  are  dead  and  gone,  —  please  God  !  The  battle  goes 
on  everywhere  throughout  civilization ;  but  here,  here, 
here  is  the  broad  white  flag  flying  which  proclaims, 
first  of  all,  peace  and  good-will  to  men,  and,  next  to 
that,  the  absolute,  unconditional  spiritual  liberty  of 
each  individual  immortal  soul !  The  three-hilled  city 
against  the  seven-hilled  city  I  That  is  it,  Sir,  —  no 
thing  less  than  that ;  and  if  you  know  what  that  means, 
I  don't  think  you  '11  ask  for  anything  more.  I  swear 
to  you,  Sir,  I  believe  that  these  two  centres  of  civili 
zation  are  just  exactly  the  two  points  that  close  the 
circuit  in  the  battery  of  our  planetary  intelligence  ! 
And  I  believe  there  are  spiritual  eyes  looking  out  from 
Uranus  and  unseen  Neptune,  —  ay,  Sir,  from  the  sys 
tems  of  Sirius  and  Arcturus  and  Aldebaran,  and  as 
far  as  that  faint  stain  of  sprinkled  worlds  confluent  in 
the  distance  that  we  call  the  nebula  of  Orion,  —  look 
ing  on,  Sir,  with  what  organs  I  know  not,  to  see 
which  are  going  to  melt  in  that  fiery  fusion,  the  acci 
dents  and  hindrances  of  humanity  or  man  himself,  Sir, 
—  the  stupendous  abortion,  the  illustrious  failure  that 
he  is,  if  the  three-hilled  city  does  not  ride  down  and 
trample  out  the  seven-hilled  city ! 

—  Steam  's  up  !  —  said  the  young  man  John,  so 
called,  in  a  low  tone.  — Three  hundred  and  sixty -five 
tons  to  the  square  inch.  Let  him  blow  her  off,  or 
he  '11  bu'st  his  b'iler. 

The  divinity-student  took  it  calmly,  only  whisper 
ing  that  he  thought  there  was  a  little  confusion  of 


THE  PROFESSOR   AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     79 

images  between  a  galvanic  battery  and  a  charge  of 
cavalry. 

But  the  Koh-i-noor  —  the  gentleman,  you  remem 
ber,  with  a  very  large  diamond  in  his  shirt-front  — 
laughed  his  scornful  laugh,  and  made  as  if  to  speak. 

Sail  in,  Metropolis!  —  said  that  same  young  man 
John,  by  name.  And  then,  in  a  lower  tone,  not 
meaning  to  be  heard,  — Now,  then,  Ma'am  Allen! 

But  he  was  heard, — and  the  Koh-i-noor's  face 
turned  so  white  with  rage,  that  his  blue-black  mous 
tache  and  beard  looked  fearful,  seen  against  it.  He 
grinned  with  wrath,  and  caught  at  a  tumbler,  as  if  he 
would  have  thrown  it  or  its  contents  at  the  speaker. 
The  young  Marylander  fixed  his  clear,  steady  eye  upon 
him,  and  laid  his  hand  on  his  arm,  carelessly  almost, 
but  the  Jewel  found  it  was  held  so  that  he  could  not 
move  it.  It  was  of  no  use.  The  youth  was  his  mas 
ter  in  muscle,  and  in  that  deadly  Indian  hug  in  which 
men  wrestle  with  their  eyes;  —  over  in  five  seconds, 
but  breaks  one  of  their  two  backs,  and  is  good  for 
threescore  years  and  ten ;  —  one  trial  enough,  —  set 
tles  the  whole  matter,  —  just  as  when  two  feathered 
songsters  of  the  barnyard,  game  and  dunghill,  come 
together,  —  after  a  jump  or  two  at  each  other,  and 
a  few  sharp  kicks,  there  is  the  end  of  it ;  and  it  is, 
Apres  vous,  Monsieur,  with  the  beaten  party  in  all  the 
social  relations  for  all  tne  rest  of  his  days. 

I  cannot  philosophically  account  for  the  Koh-i- 
noor's  wrath.  For  though  a  cosmetic  is  sold,  bearing 
the  name  of  the  lady  to  whom  reference  was  made  by 
the  young  person  John,  yet,  as  it  is  publicly  asserted 
in  respectable  prints  that  this  cosmetic  is  not  a  dye,  I 
see  no  reason  why  he  should  have  felt  offended  by  any 
suggestion  that  he  was  indebted  to  it  or  its  authoress. 


80     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE*. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  there  are  certain  exceptional  com 
plexions  to  which  the  purple  tinge,  above  alluded  to, 
is  natural.  Nature  is  fertile  in  variety.  I  saw  an 
albiness  in  London  once,  for  sixpence,  (including  the 
inspection  of  a  stuffed  boa-constrictor,)  who  looked  as 
if  she  had  been  boiled  in  milk.  A  young  Hottentot 
of  my  acquaintance  had  his  hair  all  in  little  pellets  of 
the  size  of  marrowfat  peas.  One  of  my  own  class 
mates  has  undergone  a  singular  change  of  late  years, 
—  his  hair  losing  its  original  tint,  and  getting  a  re 
markable  discolored  look;  and  another  has  ceased  to 
cultivate  any  hair  at  all  over  the  vertex  or  crown  of 
the  head.  So  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  believe  that 
the  purple-black  of  the  Koh-i-noor's  moustache  and 
whiskers  is  constitutional  and  not  pigmentary.  But 
I  can't  think  why  he  got  so  angry. 

The  intelligent  reader  will  understand  that  all  this 
pantomime  of  the  threatened  onslaught  and  its  sup 
pression  passed  so  quickly  that  it  was  all  over  by  the 
time  the  other  end  of  the  table  found  out  there  was  a 
disturbance;  just  as  a  man  chopping  wood  half  a  mile 
off  may  be  seen  resting  on  his  axe  at  the  instant  you 
hear  the  last  blow  he  struck.  So  you  will  please  to 
observe  that  the  Little  Gentleman  was  not  interrupted 
during  the  time  implied  by  these  ex-post-facto  remarks 
of  mine,  but  for  some  ten  or  fifteen  seconds  only. 

He  did  not  seem  to  mind  the  interruption  at  all, 
for  he  started  again.  The  "Sir"  of  his  harangue  was 
no  doubt  addressed  to  myself  more  than  anybody  else, 
but  he  often  uses  it  in  discourse  as  if  he  were  talking 
with  some  imaginary  opponent. 

—  America,  Sir,  —  he  exclaimed,  —  is  the  only 
place  where  man  is  full-grown ! 

He  straightened  himself  up,  as  he  spoke,  standing 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      81 

on  the  top  round  of  his  high  chair,  I  suppose,  and  so 
presented  the  larger  part  of  his  little  figure  to  the 
view  of  the  boarders. 

It  was  next  to  impossible  to  keep  from  laughing. 
The  commentary  was  so  strange  an  illustration  of  the 
text  I  I  thought  it  was  time  to  put  in  a  word ;  for  I 
have  lived  in  foreign  parts,  and  am  more  or  less  cos 
mopolitan. 

I  doubt  if  we  have  more  practical  freedom  in  Amer 
ica  than  they  have  in  England,  —  I  said.  —  An  Eng 
lishman  thinks  as  he  likes  in  religion  and  politics. 
Mr.  Martineau  speculates  as  freely  as  ever  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  did,  and  Mr.  Bright  is  as  independent  as  Mr. 
Seward. 

Sir,  —  said  he,  —  it  is  n't  what  a  man  thinks  or 
says,  but  when  and  where  and  to  whom  he  thinks  and 
says  it.  A  man  with  a  flint  and  steel  striking  sparks 
over  a  wet  blanket  is  one  thing,  and  striking  them  over 
a  tinder-box  is  another.  The  free  Englishman  is  born 
under  protest ;  he  lives  and  dies  under  protest,  —  a 
tolerated,  but  not  a  welcome  fact.  Is  not,  freethinker  a 
term  of  reproach  in  England?  The  same  idea  in  the 
soul  of  an  Englishman  who  struggled  up  to  it  and  still 
holds  it  antagonistically,  and  in  the  soul  of  an  Amer 
ican  to  whom  it  is  congenital  and  spontaneous,  and 
often  unrecognized,  except  as  an  element  blended  with 
all  his  thoughts,  a  natural  movement,  like  the  drawing 
of  his  breath  or  the  beating  of  his  heart,  is  a  very  dif 
ferent  thing.  You  may  teach  a  quadruped  to  walk  on 
his  hind  legs,  but  he  is  always  wanting  to  be  on  all- 
fours.  Nothing  that  can  be  taught  a  growing  youth 
is  like  the  atmospheric  knowledge  he  breathes  from  his 
infancy  upwards.  The  American  baby  sucks  in  free 
dom  with  the  milk  of  the  breast  at  which  he  hangs. 


82     THE   PROFESSOR    AT    THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

—  That 's    a  good  joke,  —  said  the  young  fellow 
John,  —  consider  in'  it  commonly  belongs  to  a  female 
Paddy. 

I  thought  —  I  will  not  be  certain  —  that  the  Little 
Gentleman  winked,  as  if  he  had  been  hit  somewhere 

—  as   I  have   no  doubt   Dr.   Darwin  did  when  the 
wooden-spoon  suggestion  upset  his  theory  about  why, 
etc.     If  he  winked,  however,  he  did  not  dodge. 

A  lively  comment !  —  he  said.  —  But  Rome,  in  her 
great  founder,  sucked  the  blood  of  empire  out  of  the 
dugs  of  a  brute,  Sir !  The  Milesian  wet-nurse  is  only 
a  convenient  vessel  through  which  the  American  in 
fant  gets  the  life-blood  of  this  virgin  soil,  Sir,  that  is 
making  man  over  again,  on  the  sunset  pattern !  You 
don't  think  what  we  are  doing  and  going  to  do  here. 
Why,  Sir,  while  commentators  are  bothering  them 
selves  with  interpretation  of  prophecies,  we  have  got 
the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth  over  us  and  under 
us !  Was  there  ever  anything  in  Italy,  I  should  like 
to  know,  like  a  Boston  sunset? 

—  This  time  there  was  a  laugh,  and  the  little  man 
himself  almost  smiled. 

Yes,  —  Boston  sunsets ;  —  perhaps  they  're  as  good 
in  some  other  places,  but  I  know  'em  best  here.  Any 
how,  the  American  skies  are  different  from  anything 
they  see  in  the  Old  World.  Yes,  and  the  rocks  are 
different,  and  the  soil  is  different,  and  everything  that 
comes  out  of  the  soil,  from  grass  up  to  Indians,  is  dif 
ferent.  And  now  that  the  provisional  races  are  dying 
out  — 

—  What  do  you  mean  by  the  provisional  races,  Sir? 

—  said  the  divinity-student,  interrupting  him. 
Why,  the  aboriginal  bipeds,  to  be  sure,  —  he  an 
swered,  —  the  red -crayon  sketch  of  humanity  laid  on 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      88 

the  canvas  before  the  colors  for  the  real  manhood 
were  ready. 

I  hope  they  will  come  to  something  yet,  —  said  the 
divinity-student. 

Irreclaimable,  Sir,  —  irreclaimable !  —  said  the  Lit 
tle  Gentleman.  —  Cheaper  to  breed  white  men  than 
domesticate  a  nation  of  red  ones.  When  you  can  get 
the  bitter  out  of  the  partridge's  thigh,  you  can  make 
an  enlightened  commonwealth  of  Indians.  A  provi 
sional  race,  Sir, — nothing  more.  Exhaled  carbonic 
acid  for  the  use  of  vegetation,  kept  down  the  bears 
and  catamounts,  enjoyed  themselves  in  scalping  and 
being  scalped,  and  then  passed  away  or  are  passing 
away,  according  to  the  programme. 

Well,  Sir,  these  races  dying  out,  the  white  man  has 
to  acclimate  himself.  It  takes  him  a  good  while ;  but 
he  will  come  all  right  by-and-by,  Sir,  —  as  sound  as  a 
woodchuck,  —  as  sound  as  a  musquash ! 

A  new  nursery,  Sir,  with  Lake  Superior  and  Hu 
ron  and  all  the  rest  of  'em  for  wash-basins !  A  new 
race,  and  a  whole  new  world  for  the  new-born  human 
soul  to  work  in !  And  Boston  is  the  brain  of  it,  and 
lias  been  any  time  these  hundred  years !  That 's  all 
I  claim  for  Boston,  —  that  it  is  the  thinking  centre 
of  the  continent,  and  therefore  of  the  planet. 

—  And  the  grand  emporium  of  modesty,  —  said  the 
divinity-student,  a  little  mischievously. 

Oh,  don't  talk  to  me  of  modesty!  —  answered  the 
Little  Gentleman, — I'm  past  that!  There  is  n't  a 
thing  that  was  ever  said  or  done  in  Boston,  from 
pitching  the  tea  overboard  to  the  last  ecclesiastical  lie 
it  tore  into  tatters  and  flung  into  the  dock,  that 
was  n't  thought  very  indelicate  by  some  fool  or  tyrant 
or  bigot,  and  all  the  entrails  of  commercial  and  spir- 


84     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

itual  conservatism  are  twisted  into  colics  as  often  as  this 
revolutionary  brain  of  ours  has  a  fit  of  thinking  come 
over  it.  —  No,  Sir,  —  show  me  any  other  place  that 
is,  or  was  since  the  megalosaurus  has  died  out,  where 
wealth  and  social  influence  are  so  fairly  divided  be 
tween  the  stationary  and  the  progressive  classes! 
Show  me  any  other  place  where  every  other  drawing- 
room  is  not  a  chamber  of  the  Inquisition,  with  papas 
and  mammas  for  inquisitors,  —  and  the  cold  shoulder, 
instead  of  the  "dry  pan  and  the  gradual  fire,"  the 
punishment  of  "heresy"  ! 

—  We  think  Baltimore  is  a  pretty  civilized  kind  of 
a  village,  —  said  the  young  Marylander,  good-na 
turedly.  —  But  I  suppose  you  can't  forgive  it  for 
always  keeping  a  little  ahead  of  Boston  in  point  of 
numbers,  —  tell  the  truth  now.  Are  we  not  the  cen 
tre  of  something? 

Ah,  indeed,  to  be  sure  you  are.  You  are  the  gas 
tronomic  metropolis  of  the  Union.  Why  don't  you 
put  a  canvas-back  duck  on  the  top  of  the  Washington 
column?  Why  don't  you  get  that  lady  off  from  Bat 
tle  Monument  and  plant  a  terrapin  in  her  place? 
Why  will  you  ask  for  other  glories  when  you  have 
soft  crabs?  No,  Sir,  — you  live  too  well  to  think  as 
hard  as  we  do  in  Boston.  Logic  comes  to  us  with  the 
salt-fish  of  Cape  Ann ;  rhetoric  is  born  of  the  beans 
of  Beverly;  but  you  —  if  you  open  your  mouths  to 
speak,  Nature  stops  them  with  a  fat  oyster,  or  offers 
a  slice  of  the  breast  of  your  divine  bird,  and  silences 
all  your  aspirations. 

And  what  of  Philadelphia?  —  said  the  Marylander. 

Oh,  Philadelphia?  —  Waterworks, — killed  by  the 
Croton  and  Cochituate ;  —  Ben  Franklin,  —  borrowed 
from  Boston ;  —  David  Eittenhouse,  —  made  an  or- 


THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      85 

rery ;  —  Benjamin  Rush,  —  made  a  medical  system ; 

—  both  interesting  to  antiquarians ;  —  great  Red-river 
raft  of  medical  students,  —  spontaneous  generation  of 
professors  to  match ;  —  more  widely  known  through 
the  Moyamensing  hose-company,  and  the  Wistar  par 
ties; —  for  geological  section  of  social  strata,  go  to 
The  Club.  —  Good  place  to  live  in,  —  first-rate  mar 
ket,  —  tip-top  peaches.  —  What   do  we  know   about 
Philadelphia,  except  that  the  engine-companies    are 
always  shooting  each  other? 

And  what  do  you  say  to  Ne'  York?  —  asked  the 
Koh-i-noor. 

A  great  city,  Sir,  —  replied  the  Little  Gentleman, 
—  a  very  opulent,  splendid  city.  A  point  of  transit 
of  much  that  is  remarkable,  and  of  permanence  for 
much  that  is  respectable.  A  great  money-centre. 
San  Francisco  with  the  mines  above-ground,  —  and 
some  of  'em  under  the  sidewalks.  I  have  seen  next 
to  nothing  grandiose,  out  of  New  York,  in  all  our 
cities.  It  makes  'em  all  look  paltry  and  petty.  Has 
many  elements  of  civilization.  May  stop  where  Ven 
ice  did,  though,  for  aught  we  know.  —  The  order  of 
its  development  is  just  this :  —  Wealth ;  architecture ; 
upholstery;  painting;  sculpture.  Printing,  as  a  me 
chanical  art,  —  just  as  Nicholas  Jenson  and  the  Aldi, 
who  were  scholars  too,  made  Venice  renowned  for  it. 
Journalism,  which  is  the  accident  of  business  and 
crowded  populations,  in  great  perfection.  Venice  got 
as  far  as  Titian  and  Paul  Veronese  and  Tintoretto, 

—  great  colorists,  mark  you,  magnificent  on  the  flesh- 
and-blood  side  of  Art,  —  but  look  over  to  Florence 
and  see  who  lie  in  Santa  Croce,  and  ask  out  of  whose 
loins  Dante  sprung! 

Oh,  yes,  to  be  sure,  Venice  built  her  Ducal  Palace, 


86     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and  her  Church  of  St.  Mark,  and  her  Casa  d'  Oro, 
and  the  rest  of  her  golden  houses ;  and  Venice  had 
great  pictures  and  good  music  ;  and  Venice  had  a 
Golden  Book,  in  which  all  the  large  tax-payers  had 
their  names  written ;  —  but  all  that  did  not  make  Ven 
ice  the  brain  of  Italy. 

I  tell  you  what,  Sir,  —  with  all  these  magnificent 
appliances  of  civilization,  it  is  time  we  began  to  hear 
something  from  thejeunesse  doree  whose  names  are  on 
the  Golden  Book  of  our  sumptuous,  splendid,  marble- 
palaced  Venice,  —  something  in  the  higher  walks  of 
literature,  — something  in  the  councils  of  the  nation. 
Plenty  of  Art, 'I  grant  you,  Sir;  now,  then,  for  vast 
libraries,  and  for  mighty  scholars  and  thinkers  and 
statesmen,  —  five  for  every  Boston  one,  as  the  popula 
tion  is  to  ours,  —  ten  to  one  more  properly,  in  virtue 
of  centralizing  attraction  as  the  alleged  metropolis,  — 
and  not  call  our  people  provincials,  and  have  to  come 
begging  to  us  to  write  the  lives  of  Hendrik  Hudson 
and  Gouverneur  Morris ! 

—  The  Little  Gentleman  was  on  his  hobby,  exalting 
his  own  city  at  the  expense  of  every  other  place.  I 
have  my  doubts  if  he  had  been  in  either  of  the  cities 
he  had  been  talking  about.  I  was  just  going  to  say 
something  to  sober  him  down,  if  I  could,  when  the 
young  Mary  lander  spoke  up. 

Come,  now, — he  said, — what's  the  use  of  thesa 
comparisons?  Did  n't  I  hear  this  gentleman  saying, 
the  other  day,  that  every  American  owns  all  Amer 
ica?  If  you  have  really  got  more  brains  in  Boston 
than  other  folks,  as  you  seem  to  think,  who  hates  you 
for  it,  except  a  pack  of  scribbling  fools  ?  If  I  like 
Broadway  better  than  Washington  Street,  what  then  ? 
I  own  them  both,  as  much  as  anybody  owns  either. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      87 

I  am  an  American,  —  and  wherever  I  look  up  and  see 
the  stars  and  stripes  overhead,  that  is  home  to  me ! 

He  spoke,  and  looked  up  as  if  he  heard  the  embla 
zoned  folds  crackling  over  him  in  the  breeze.  We 
all  looked  up  involuntarily,  as  if  we  should  see  the 
national  flag  by  so  doing.  The  sight  of  the  dingy 
ceiling  and  the  gas-fixture  depending  therefrom  dis 
pelled  the  illusion. 

Bravo !  bravo !  —  said  the  venerable  gentleman  on 
the  other  side  of  the  table.  —  Those  are  the  sentiments 
of  Washington's  Farewell  Address.  Nothing  better 
than  that  since  the  last  chapter  in  Revelations..  Five- 
and-f orty  years  ago  there  used  to  be  Washington  soci 
eties,  and  little  boys  used  to  walk  in  processions,  each 
little  boy  having  a  copy  of  the  Address,  bound  in  red, 
hung  round  his  neck  by  a  ribbon.  Why  don't  they 
now?  Why  don't  they  now?  I  saw  enough  of  hat 
ing  each  other  in  the  old  Federal  times ;  now  let 's 
love  each  other,  I  say,  —  let 's  love  each  other,  and 
not  try  to  make  it  out  that  there  is  n't  any  place  fit 
to  live  in  except  the  one  we  happen  to  be  born  in. 

It  dwarfs  the  mind,  I  think,  —  said  I,  —  to  feed  it 
on  any  localism.  The  full  stature  of  manhood  is 
shrivelled  — 

The  color  burst  up  into  my  cheeks.  What  was 
I  saying,  —  I,  who  would  not  for  the  world  have 
pained  our  unfortunate  little  boarder  by  an  allusion? 

I  will  go,  —  he  said,  —  and  made  a  movement  with 
his  left  arm  to  let  himself  down  from  his  high  chair. 

No, — no, — he  doesn't  mean  it, — you  must  not 
go,  — said  a  kind  voice  next  him;  and  a  soft,  white 
hand  was  laid  upon  his  arm. 

Iris,  my  dear !  —  exclaimed  another  voice,  as  of  a 
female,  in  accents  that  might  be  considered  a  strong 


88      THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

atmospheric  solution  of  duty  with  very  little  flavor  of 
grace. 

She  did  not  move  for  this  address,  and  there  was  a 
tableau  that  lasted  some  seconds.  For  the  young  girl, 
in  the  glory  of  half -blown  womanhood,  and  the  dwarf, 
the  cripple,  the  misshapen  little  creature  covered 
with  Nature's  insults,  looked  straight  into  each  other's 
eyes. 

Perhaps  no  handsome  young  woman  had  ever 
looked  at  him  so  in  his  life.  Certainly  the  young 
girl  never  had  looked  into  eyes  that  reached  into  her 
soul  as  these  did.  It  was  not  that  they  were  in  them 
selves  supernaturally  bright,  — •-  but  there  was  the  sad 
fire  in  them  that  flames  up  from  the  soul  of  one  who 
looks  on  the  beauty  of  woman  without  hope,  but,  alas ! 
not  without  emotion.  To  him  it  seemed  as  if  those 
amber  gates  had  been  translucent  as  the  brown  water 
of  a  mountain  brook,  and  through  them  he  had  seen 
dimly  into  a  virgin  wilderness,  only  waiting  for  the 
sunrise  of  a  great  passion  for  all  its  buds  to  blow  and 
all  its  bowers  to  ring  with  melody. 

That  is  my  image,  of  course,  —  not  his.  It  was  not 
a  simile  that  was  in  his  mind,  or  is  in  anybody's  at 
such  a  moment,  —  it  was  a  pang  of  wordless  passion, 
and  then  a  silent,  inward  moan. 

A  lady's  wish,  — he  said,  with  a  certain  gallantry 
of  manner,  —  makes  slaves  of  us  all.  —  And  Nature, 
who  is  kind  to  all  her  children,  and  never  leaves  the 
smallest  and  saddest  of  all  her  human  failures  without 
one  little  comfit  of  self-love  at  the  bottom  of  his  poor 
ragged  pocket,  —  Nature  suggested  to  him  that  he  had 
turned  his  sentence  well;  and  he  fell  into  a  reverie, 
in  which  the  old  thoughts  that  were  always  hovering 
just  outside  the  doors  guarded  by  Common  Sense,  and 


THE  PROFESSOR   AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      89 

watching  for  a  chance  to  squeeze  in,  knowing  perfectly- 
well  they  would  be  ignominiously  kicked  out  again  as 
soon  as  Common  Sense  saw  them,  flocked  in  pell-mell, 
—  misty,  fragmentary,  vague,  half -ashamed  of  them 
selves,  but  still  shouldering  up  against  his  inner  con 
sciousness  till  it  warmed  with  their  contact :  —  John 
Wilkes's  —  the  ugliest  man's  in  England  —  saying, 
that  with  half-an-hour's  start  he  would  cut  out  the 
handsomest  man  in  all  the  land  in  any  woman's  good 
graces;  Cadenus  —  old  and  savage  —  leading  captive 
Stella  and  Vanessa;  and  then  the  stray  line  of  a  bal 
lad,  "And  a  winning  tongue  had  he,"  —  as  much  as 
to  say,  it  is  n't  looks,  after  all,  but  cunning  words,  that 
win  our  Eves  over,  —  just  as  of  old  when  it  was  the 
worst-looking  brute  of  the  lot  that  got  our  grand 
mother  to  listen  to  his  stuff  and  so  did  the  mischief. 

Ah,  dear  me !  We  rehearse  the  part  of  Hercules 
with  his  club,  subjugating  man  and  woman  in  our 
fancy,  the  first  by  the  weight  of  it,  and  the  second  by 
our  handling  of  it,  —  we  rehearse  it,  I  say,  by  our 
own  hearth-stones,  with  the  cold  poker  as  our  club, 
and  the  exercise  is  easy.  But  when  we  come  to  real 
life,  the  poker  is  in  the  fire,  and,  ten  to  one,  if  we 
would  grasp  it,  we  find  it  too  hot  to  hold;  —  lucky 
for  us,  if  it  is  not  white-hot,  and  we  do  not  have  to 
leave  the  skin  of  our  hands  sticking  to  it  when  we 
fling  it  down  or  drop  it  with  a  loud  or  silent  cry ! 

—  I  am  frightened  when  I  find  into  what  a  laby 
rinth  of  human  character  and  feeling  I  am  winding. 
I  meant  to  tell  my  thoughts,  and  to  throw  in  a  few 
studies  of  manner  and  costume  as  they  pictured  them 
selves  for  me  from  day  to  day.  Chance  has  thrown 
together  at  the  table  with  me  a  number  of  persons 
who  are  worth  studying,  and  I  mean  not  only  to  look 


90     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

on  them,  but,  if  I  can,  through  them.  You  can  get 
any  man's  or  woman's  secret,  whose  sphere  is  circum 
scribed  by  your  own,  if  you  will  only  look  patiently  on 
them  long  enough.  Nature  is  always  applying  her 
reagents  to  character,  if  you  will  take  the  pains  to 
watch  her.  Our  studies  of  character,  to  change  the 
image,  are  very  much  like  the  surveyor's  triangulation 
of  a  geographical  province.  We  get  a  base-line  in 
organization,  always ;  then  we  get  an  angle  by  sight 
ing  some  distant  object  to  which  the  passions  or  aspi 
rations  of  the  subject  of  our  observation  are  tending; 
then  another;  —  and  so  we  construct  our  first  triangle. 
Once  fix  a  man's  ideals,  and  for  the  most  part  the  rest 
is  easy.  A  wants  to  die  worth  half  a  million.  Good. 
B  (female)  wants  to  catch  him,  —  and  outlive  him. 
All  right.  Minor  details  at  our  leisure. 

What  is  it,  of  all  your  experiences,  of  all  your 
thoughts,  of  all  your  misdoings,  that  lies  at  the  very 
bottom  of  the  great  heap  of  acts  of  consciousness 
which  make  up  your  past  life?  What  should  you 
most  dislike  to  tell  your  nearest  friend?  —  Be  so  good 
as  to  pause  for  a  brief  space,  and  shut  the  volume  you 
hold  with  your  finger  between  the  pages.  —  Oh,  that 
is  it! 

What  a  confessional  I  have  been  sitting  at,  with 
the  inward  ear  of  my  soul  open,  as  the  multitudinous 
whisper  of  my  involuntary  confidants  came  back  to  me 
like  the  reduplicated  echo  of  a  cry  among  the  craggy 
Mils! 

At  the  house  of  a  friend  where  I  once  passed  the 
night  was  one  of  those  stately  upright  cabinet  desks 
and  cases  of  drawers  which  were  not  rare  in  prosperous 
families  daring  the  last  century.  It  had  held  the 
clothes  and  the  books  and  the  papers  of  generation 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     91 

after  generation.  The  hands  that  opened  its  drawers 
had  grown  withered,  shrivelled,  and  at  last  been 
folded  in  death.  The  children  that  played  with  the 
lower  handles  had  got  tall  enough  to  open  the  desk,  — 
to  reach  the  upper  shelves  behind  the  folding-doors, 
—  grown  bent  after  a  while,  —  and  then  followed 
those  who  had  gone  before,  and  left  the  old  cabinet  to 
be  ransacked  by  a  new  generation. 

A  boy  of  ten  or  twelve  was  looking  at  it  a  few  years 
ago,  and,  being  a  quick-witted  fellow,  saw  that  all  the 
space  was  not  accounted  for  by  the  smaller  drawers  in 
the  part  beneath  the  lid  of  the  desk.  Prying  about 
with  busy  eyes  and  fingers,  he  at  length  came  upon  a 
spring,  on  pressing  which,  a  secret  drawer  flew  from 
its  hiding-place.  It  had  never  been  opened  but  by 
the  maker.  The  mahogany  shavings  and  dust  were 
lying  in  it  as  when  the  artisan  closed  it,  —  and  when 
I  saw  it,  it  was  as  fresh  as  if  that  day  finished. 

Is  there  not  one  little  drawer  in  your  soul,  my 
sweet  reader,  which  no  hand  but  yours  has  ever 
opened,  and  which  none  that  have  known  you  seem  to 
have  suspected?  What  does  it  hold?  —  A  sin? — I 
hope  not. 

What  a  strange  tiling  an  old  dead  sin  laid  away  in 
a  secret  drawer  of  the  soul  is !  Must  it  some  time  or 
other  be  moistened  with  tears,  until  it  comes  to  life 
again  and  begins  to  stir  in  our  consciousness,  —  as 
the  dry  wheel -animalcule,  looking  like  a  grain  of  dust, 
becomes  alive,  if  it  is  wet  with  a  drop  of  water? 

Or  is  it  a  passion?  There  are  plenty  of  withered 
men  and  women  walking  about  the  streets  who  have 
the  secret  drawer  in  their  hearts,  which,  if  it  were 
opened,  would  show  as  fresh  as  it  was  when  they  were 
in  the  flush  of  youth  and  its  first  trembling  emotions. 


92     THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

What  it  held  will,  perhaps,  never  be  known,  until 
they  are  dead  and  gone,  and  some  curious  eye  lights 
on  an  old  yellow  letter  with  the  fossil  footprints  of 
the  extinct  passion  trodden  thick  all  over  it. 

There  is  not  a  boarder  at  our  table,  I  firmly  be 
lieve,  excepting  the  young  girl,  who  has  not  a  story  of 
the  heart  to  tell,  if  one  could  only  get  the  secret 
drawer  open.  Even  this  arid  female,  whose  armor  of 
black  bombazine  looks  stronger  against  the  shafts  of 
love  than  any  cuirass  of  triple  brass,  has  had  her  sen 
timental  history,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  I  will  tell 
you  my  reason  for  suspecting  it. 

Like  many  other  old  women,  she  shows  a  great  ner 
vousness  and  restlessness  whenever  I  venture  to  ex 
press  any  opinion  upon  a  class  of  subjects  which  can 
hardly  be  said  to  belong  to  any  man  or  set  of  men 
as  their  strictly  private  property,  —  not  even  to  the 
clergy,  or  the  newspapers  commonly  called  "reli 
gious."  Now,  although  it  would  be  a  great  luxury  to 
me  to  obtain  my  opinions  by  contract,  ready-made, 
from  a  professional  man,  and  although  I  have  a  con 
stitutional  kindly  feeling  to  all  sorts  of  good  people 
which  would  make  me  happy  to  agree  with  all  their 
beliefs,  if  that  were  possible,  still  I  must  have  an  idea, 
now  and  then,  as  to  the  meaning  of  life ;  and  though 
the  only  condition  of  peace  in  this  world  is  to  have  no 
ideas,  or,  at  least,  not  to  express  them,  with  reference 
to  such  subjects,  I  can't  afford  to  pay  quite  so  much 
as  that  even  for  peace. 

I  find  that  there  is  a  very  prevalent  opinion  among 
the  dwellers  on  the  shores  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton's 
Ocean  of  Truth,  that  salt  fish,  which  have  been  taken 
from  it  a  good  while  ago,  split  open,  cured  and  dried, 
are  the  only  proper  and  allowable  food  for  reasonable 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      93 

people.  I  maintain,  on  the  other  hand,  that  there  are 
a  number  of  live  fish  still  swimming  in  it,  and  that 
every  one  of  us  has  a  right  to  see  if  he  cannot  catch 
some  of  them.  Sometimes  I  please  myself  with  the 
idea  that  I  have  landed  an  actual  living  fish,  small, 
perhaps,  but  with  rosy  gills  and  silvery  scales.  Then 
I  find  the  consumers  of  nothing  but  the  salted  and 
dried  article  insist  that  it  is  poisonous,  simply  because 
it  is  alive,  and  cry  out  to  people  not  to  touch  it.  I 
have  not  found,  however,  that  people  mind  them  much. 
The  poor  boarder  in  bombazine  is  my  dynamome 
ter.  I  try  every  questionable  proposition  on  her.  If 
she  winces,  I  must  be  prepared  for  an  outcry  from  the 
other  old  women.  I  frightened  her,  the  other  day, 
by  saying  tli&t  faith,  as  an  intellectual  state,  was  self- 
reliance,  which,  if  you  have  a  metaphysical  turn,  you 
will  find  is  not  so  much  of  a  paradox  as  it  sounds  at 
first.  So  she  sent  me  a  book  to  read  which  was  to 
cure  me  of  that  error.  It  was  an  old  book,  and  looked 
as  if  it  had  not  been  opened  for  a  long  time.  What 
should  drop  out  of  it,  one  day,  but  a  small  heart- 
shaped  paper,  containing  a  lock  of  that  straight, 
coarse,  brown  hair  which  sets  off  the  sharp  faces  of  so 
many  thin-flanked,  large-handed  bumpkins!  I  read 
upon  the  paper  the  name  "Hiram."  —  Love!  love! 
love !  —  everywhere !  everywhere !  —  under  diamonds 
and  housemaids'  "jewelry,"  —  lifting  the  marrowy 
camel's-hair,  and  rustling  even  the  black  bombazine ! 
—  No,  no,  —  I  think  she  never  was  pretty,  but  she 
was  young  once,  and  wore  bright  ginghams,  and,  per 
haps,  gay  merinos.  We  shall  find  that  the  poor  little 
crooked  man  has  been  in  love,  or  is  in  love,  or  will  be 
in  love  before  we  have  done  with  him,  for  aught  that 
I  know! 


94      THE    PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Romance !  Was  there  ever  a  boarding-house  in  the 
world  where  the  seemingly  prosaic  table  had  not  a  liv 
ing  fresco  for  its  background,  where  you  could  see,  if 
you  had  eyes,  the  smoke  and  fire  of  some  upheaving 
sentiment,  or  the  dreary  craters  of  smouldering  or 
burnt-out  passions  ?  You  look  on  the  black  bomba 
zine  and  high-necked  decorum  of  your  neighbor,  and 
no  more  think  of  the  real  life  that  underlies  this  de 
spoiled  and  dismantled  womanhood  than  you  think  of 
a  stone  trilobite  as  having  once  been  full  of  the  juices 
and  the  nervous  thrills  of  throbbing  and  self-conscious 
being.  There  is  a  wild  creature  under  that  long  yel 
low  pin  which  serves  as  brooch  for  the  bombazine 
cuirass,  —  a  wild  creature,  which  I  venture  to  say 
would  leap  in  his  cage,  if  I  should  stir  him,  quiet  as 
you  think  him.  A  heart  which  has  been  domesticated 
by  matrimony  and  maternity  is  as  tranquil  as  a  tame 
bulfinch ;  but  a  wild  heart  which  has  never  been  fairly 
broken  in  flutters  fiercely  long  after  you  think  time 
has  tamed  it  down,  —  like  that  purple  finch  I  had  the 
other  day,  which  could  not  be  approached  without 
such  palpitations  and  frantic  flings  against  the  bars 
of  his  cage,  that  I  had  to  send  him  back  and  get  a  lit 
tle  orthodox  canary  which  had  learned  to  be  quiet  and 
never  mind  the  wires  or  his  keeper's  handling.  I  will 
tell  you  my  wicked,  but  half  involuntary  experiment 
on  the  wild  heart  under  the  faded  bombazine. 

Was  there  ever  a  person  in  the  room  with  you, 
marked  by  any  special  weakness  or  peculiarity,  with 
whom  you  could  be  two  hours  and  not  touch  the  infirm 
spot?  I  confess  the  most  frightful  tendency  to  do 
just  this  thing.  If  a  man  has  a  brogue,  I  am  sure  to 
catch  myself  imitating  it.  If  another  is  lame,  I  fol 
low  him,  or,  worse  than  that,  go  before  him,  limping. 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.      95 

I  could  never  meet  an  Irish  gentleman  —  if  it  had 
been  the  Duke  of  Wellington  himself  —  without  stum 
bling  upon  the  word  "Paddy,"- —  which  I  use  rarely 
in  my  common  talk. 

I  have  been  worried  to  know  whether  this  was  ow 
ing  to  some  innate  depravity  of  disposition  on  my 
part,  some  malignant  torturing  instinct,  which,  under 
different  circumstances,  might  have  made  a  Fijian 
anthropophagus  of  me,  or  to  some  law  of  thought  for 
which  I  was  not  answerable.  It  is,  1  am  convinced, 
a  kind  of  physical  fact  like  endosmosi»,  with  which 
some  of  you  are  acquainted.  A  thin  film  of  polite 
ness  separates  the  unspoken  and  unspeakable  current 
of  thought  from  the  stream  of  conversation.  After  a 
time  one  begins  to  soak  through  and  mingle  with  the 
other. 

We  were  talking  about  names,  one  day.  —  Was 
there  ever  anything,  —  I  said,  —  like  the  Yankee  for 
inventing  the  most  uncouth,  pretentious,  detestable 
appellations,  —  inventing  or  finding  them,  —  since  the 
time  of  Praise-God  Barebones?  I  heard  a  country- 
boy  once  talking  of  another  whom  he  called  Elpit,  as 
I  understood  him.  Elbridge  is  common  enough,  but 
this  sounded  oddly.  It  seems  the  boy  was  christened 
Lord  Pitt,  —  and  called  for  convenience,  as  above. 
I  have  heard  a  charming  little  girl,  belonging  to  an 
intelligent  family  in  the  country,  called  Anges  inva 
riably;  doubtless  intended  for  Agnes.  Names  are 
cheap.  How  can  a  man  name  an  innocent  new-born 
child,  that  never  did  him  any  harm,  Hiram  ?  —  The 
poor  relation,  or  whatever  she  is,  in  bombazine,  turned 
toward  me,  but  I  was  stupid,  and  went  on.  —  To  think 
of  a  man  going  through  life  saddled  with  such  an 
abominable  name  as  that!  —  The  poor  relation  grew 


96     THE   PROFESSOR   AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

very  uneasy.  —  I  continued ;  for  I  never  thought  of 
all  this  till  afterwards.  — I  knew  one  young  fellow,  a 
good  many  years  ago,  by  the  name  of  Hiram  — 

—  What 's  got  into  you,  Cousin,  —  said  our  land 
lady,  —  to  look  so  ?  —  There !  you  've  upset  your  tea 
cup! 

It  suddenly  occurred  to  me  what  I  had  been  doing, 
and  I  saw  the  poor  woman  had  her  hand  at  her  throat ; 
she  was  half -choking  with  the  "hysteric  ball,"  —  a 
very  odd  symptom,  as  you  know,  which  nervous 
women  often-  complain  of.  What  business  had  I  to 
be  trying  experiments  on  this  forlorn  old  soul?  I 
had  a  great  deal  better  be  watching  that  young  girl. 

Ah,  the  young  girl !  I  am  sure  that  she  can  hide 
nothing  from  me.  Her  skin  is  so  transparent  that  one 
can  almost  count  her  heart-beats  by  the  flushes  they 
send  into  her  cheeks.  She  does  not  seem  to  be  shy, 
either.  I  think  she  does  not  know  enough  of  danger 
to  be  timid.  She  seems  to  me  like  one  of  those  birds 
that  travellers  tell  of,  found  in  remote,  uninhabited 
islands,  who,  having  never  received  any  wrong  at  the 
hand  of  man,  show  no  alarm  at  and  hardly  any  partic 
ular  consciousness  of  his  presence. 

The  first  thing  will  be  to  see  how  she  and  our  little 
deformed  gentleman  get  along  together ;  for,  as  I  have 
told  you,  they  sit  side  by  side.  The  next  thing  will 
be  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  duenna,  — the  "Model "  and 
so  forth,  as  the  white-neck-cloth  called  her.  The  in 
tention  of  that  estimable  lady  is,  I  understand,  to 
launch  her  and  leave  her.  I  suppose  there  is  no  help 
for  it,  and  I  don't  doubt  this  young  lady  knows  how 
to  take  care  of  herself,  but  I  do  not  like  to  see  young 
girls  turned  loose  in  boarding-houses.  Look  here 
now!  There  is  that  jewel  of  his  race,  whom  I  have 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      97 

called  for  convenience  the  Koh-i-noor,  (you  under 
stand  it  is  quite  out  of  the  question  for  me  to  use  the 
family  names  of  our  boarders,  unless  I  want  to  get 
into  trouble,)  —  I  say,  the  gentleman  with  the  dia 
mond  is  looking  very  often  and  very  intently,  it  seems 
to  me,  down  toward  the  farther  corner  of  the  table, 
where  sits  our  amber-eyed  blonde.  The  landlady's 
daughter  does  not  look  pleased,  it  seems  to  me,  at 
this,  nor  at  those  other  attentions  which  the  gentle 
man  referred  to  has,  as  I  have  learned,  pressed  upon 
the  newly-arrived  young  person.  The  landlady  made 
a  communication  to  me,  within  a  few  days  after  the 
arrival  of  Miss  Iris,  which  I  will  repeat  to  the  best 
'jf  my  remembrance. 

He,  (the  person  I  have  been  speaking  of,)  —  she 
said,  —  seemed  to  be  kinder  hankerin'  round  after  that 
young  woman.  It  had  hurt  her  daughter's  feelin's  a 
good  deal,  that  the  gentleman  she  was  a-keepin'  com 
pany  with  should  be  offerin'  tickets  and  try  in'  to  send 
presents  to  them  that  he  'd  never  know'd  till  jest  a  lit 
tle  spell  ago,  —  and  he  as  good  as  merried,  so  fur  as 
solemn  promises  went,  to  as  respectable  a  young  lady, 
if  she  did  say  so,  as  any  there  was  round,  whosomever 
they  might  be. 

Tickets!  presents!  —  said  I. — What  tickets,  what 
presents  has  he  had  the  impertinence  to  ts  offering  to 
that  young  lady? 

Tickets   to  the  Museum,  —  said   the    landlady.  — 
There  is  them  that 's  glad  enough  to  go  to  the  Mu 
seum,  when  tickets  is  given  'em;  but  some  of  'em 
ha'n't  had  a  ticket  sence  Cenderilla  was  played,  — 
and  now  he  must  be  offerin'   'em  to  this  ridiculous 
young  paintress,  or  whatever  she  is,  that 's  come  to 
make  more  mischief  than  her  board 's  worth.     But  it 


98     THE   PROFESSOR    AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a'n't  her  fault,  —  said  the  landlady,  relenting ;  —  and 
that  aunt  of  hers,  or  whatever  she  is,  served  him  right 
enough. 

Why,  what  did  she  do? 

Do  ?  Why,  she  took  it  up  in  the  tongs  and  dropped 
it  out  o'  winder. 

Dropped  ?  dropped  what  ?  —  I  said. 

Why,  the  soap,  —  said  the  landlady. 

It  appeared  that  the  Koh-i-noor,  to  ingratiate  him 
self,  had  sent  an  elegant  package  of  perfumed  soap, 
directed  to  Miss  Iris,  as  a  delicate  expression  of  a 
lively  sentiment  of  admiration,  and  that,  after  having 
met  with  the  unfortunate  treatment  referred  to,  it  was 
picked  up  by  Master  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  appro 
priated  it,  rejoicing,  and  indulged  in  most  unheard-of 
and  inordinate  ablutions  in  consequence,  so  that  his 
hands  were  a  frequent  subject  of  maternal  congratu 
lation,  and  he  smelt  like  a  civet-cat  for  weeks  after 
his  great  acquisition. 

After  watching  daily  for  a  time,  I  think  I  can  see 
clearly  into  the  relation  which  is  growing  up  between 
the  little  gentleman  and  the  young  lady.  She  shows 
a  tenderness  to  him  that  I  can't  help  being  interested 
in.  If  he  was  her  crippled  child,  instead  of  being 
more  than  old  enough  to  be  her  father,  she  could  not 
treat  him  more  kindly.  The  landlady's  daughter  said, 
the  other  day,  she  believed  that  girl  was  settin'  her 
cap  for  the  Little  Gentleman. 

Some  of  them  young  folks  is  very  artful,  —  said  her 
mother,  —  and  there  is  them  that  would  merry  Laza 
rus,  if  he  'd  only  picked  up  crumbs  enough.  I  don't 
think,  though,  this  is  one  of  that  sort;  she's  kinder 
childlike,  —  said  the  landlady,  —  and  maybe  never  had 
any  dolls  to  play  with ;  for  they  say  her  folks  was  poor 


THE   PROFESSOR   AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.      99 

before  Ma'am  undertook  to  see  to  her  teachin'  and 
board  her  and  clothe  her. 

I  could  not  help  overhearing  this  conversation. 
"Board  her  and  clothe  her!"  —speaking  of  such  a 
young  creature !  Oh,  dear !  —  Yes,  —  she  must  be 
fed,  —  just  like  Bridget,  maid-of -all -work  at  this  es 
tablishment.  Somebody  must  pay  for  it.  Somebody 
has  a  right  to  watch  her  and  see  how  much  it  takes  to 
"keep"  her,  and  growl  at  her,  if  she  has  too  good  an 
appetite.  Somebody  has  a  right  to  keep  an  eye  on 
her  and  take  care  that  she  does  not  dress  too  prettily. 
No  mother  to  see  her  own  youth  over  again  in  those 
fresh  features  and  rising  reliefs  of  half-sculptured 
womanhood,  and,  seeing  its  loveliness,  forget  her  les 
sons  of  neutral-tinted  propriety,  and  open  the  cases 
that  hold  her  own  ornaments  to  find  for  her  a  neck 
lace  or  a  bracelet  or  a  pair  of  ear-rings,  —  those 
golden  lamps  that  light  up  the  deep,  shadowy  dim 
ples  on  the  cheeks  of  young  beauties,  —  swinging  in 
a  semibarbaric  splendor  that  carries  the  wild  fancy  to 
Abyssinian  queens  and  musky  Odalisques!  I  don't 
believe  any  woman  has  utterly  given  up  the  great 
firm  of  Mundus  &  Co. ,  so  long  as  she  wears  ear-rings. 

I  think  Iris  loves  to  hear  the  Little  Gentleman 
talk.  She  smiles  sometimes  at  his  vehement  state 
ments,  but  never  laughs  at  him.  When  he  speaks  to 
her,  she  keeps  her  eye  always  steadily  upon  him. 
This  may  be  only  natural  good-breeding,  so  to  speak, 
but  it  is  worth  noticing.  I  have  often  observed  that 
vulgar  persons,  and  public  audiences  of  inferior  col 
lective  intelligence,  have  this  in  common:  the  least 
thing  draws  off  their  minds,  when  you  are  speaking  to 
them.  I  love  this  young  creature's  rapt  attention 
to  her  diminutive  neighbor  while  he  is  speaking. 


100  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

He  is  evidently  pleased  with  it.  For  a  day  or  two 
after  she  came,  he  was  silent  and  seemed  nervous  and 
excited.  Now  he  is  fond  of  getting  the  talk  into  his 
own  hands,  and  is  obviously  conscious  that  he  has  at 
least  one  interested  listener.  Once  or  twice  I  have  seen 
marks  of  special  attention  to  personal  adornment,  — 
a  ruffled  shirt-bosom,  one  day,  and  a  diamond  pin  in 
it,  — not  so  very  large  as  the  Koh-i-noor's,  but  more 
lustrous.  I  mentioned  the  death's-head  ring  he  wears 
on  his  right  hand.  I  was  attracted  by  a  very  hand 
some  red  stone,  a  ruby  or  carbuncle  or  something  of 
the  sort,  to  notice  his  left  hand,  the  other  day.  It 
is  a  handsome  hand,  and  confirms  my  suspicion  that 
the  cast  mentioned  was  taken  from  his  arm.  After 
all,  this  is  just  what  I  should  expect.  It  is  not  very 
uncommon  to  see  the  upper  limbs,  or  one  of  them, 
running  away  with  the  whole  strength,  and,  therefore, 
with  the  whole  beauty,  which  we  should  never  have 
noticed,  if  it  had  been  divided  equally  between  all  four 
extremities.  If  it  is  so,  of  course  he  is  proud  of  his 
one  strong  and  beautifid  arm;  that  is  human  nature. 
I  am  afraid  he  can  hardly  help  betraying  his  favorit 
ism,  as  people  who  have  any  one  showy  point  are  apt 
to  do,  —  especially  dentists  with  handsome  teeth,  who 
always  smile  back  to  their  last  molars. 

Sitting,  as  he  does,  next  to  the  young  girl,  and  next 
but  one  to  the  calm  lady  who  has  her  in  charge,  he 
cannot  help  seeing  their  relations  to  each  other. 

That  is  an  admirable  woman,  Sir,  —  he  said  to  me 
one  day,  as  we  sat  alone  at  the  table  after  breakfast, 
—  an  admirable  woman,  Sir,  — and  I  hate  her. 

Of  course,  I  begged  an  explanation. 

An  admirable  woman,  Sir,  because  she  does  good 
things,  and  even  kind  things,  —  takes  care  of  this  — 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    101 

this  —  young  lady  —  we  have  here,  talks  like  a  sensi 
ble  person,  and  always  looks  as  if  she  was  doing  her 
duty  with  all  her  might.  I  hate  her  because  her  voice 
sounds  as  if  it  never  trembled  and  her  eyes  look  as 
if  she  never  knew  what  it  was  to  cry.  Besides,  she 
looks  at  me,  Sir,  stares  at  me,  as  if  she  wanted  to  get 
an  image  of  me  for  some  gallery  in  her  brain,  —  and 
we  don't  love  to  be  looked  at  in  this  way,  we  that 
have  —  I  hate  her,  —  I  hate  her,  —  her  eyes  kill  me, 
—  it  is  like  being  stabbed  with  icicles  to  be  looked  at 
so,  —  the  sooner  she  goes  home,  the  better.  I  don't 
want  a  woman  to  weigh  me  in  a  balance;  there  are 
men  enough  for  that  sort  of  work.  The  judicial  char 
acter  isn't  captivating  in  females,  Sir.  A  woman 
fascinates  a  man  quite  as  often  by  what  she  overlooks 
as  by  what  she  sees.  Love  prefers  twilight  to  day 
light;  and  a  man  doesn't  think  much  of,  nor  care 
much  for,  a  woman  outside  of  his  household,  unless  he 
can  couple  the  idea  of  love,  past,  present,  or  future, 
with  her.  I  don't  believe  the  Devil  would  give  half 
as  much  for  the  services  of  a  sinner  as  he  would  for 
those  of  one  of  these  folks  that  are  always  doing  vir 
tuous  acts  in  a  way  to  make  them  unpleasing.  —  That 
young  girl  wants  a  tender  nature  to  cherish  her  and 
give  her  a  chance  to  put  out  her  leaves,  —  sunshine, 
and  not  east  winds. 

He  was  silent,  —  and  sat  looking  at  his  handsome 
left  hand  with  the  red  stone  ring  upon  it.  —  Is  he 
going  to  fall  in  love  with  Iris? 

Here  are  some  lines  I  read  to  the  boarders  the  other 
day:  — 


102    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


THE  CROOKED  FOOTPATH. 

All,  here  it  is  !  the  sliding  rail 

That  marks  the  old  remembered  spot,  — 
The  gap  that  struck  our  schoolboy  trail,  — 

The  crooked  path  across  the  lot. 

It  left  the  road  by  school  and  church, 
A  pencilled  shadow,  nothing  more, 

That  parted  from  the  silver  birch 
And  ended  at  the  farmhouse  door. 

No  line  or  compass  traced  its  plan  ; 

With  frequent  bends  to  left  or  right, 
In  aimless,  wayward  curves  it  ran, 

But  always  kept  the  door  in  sight. 

The  gabled  porch,  with  woodbine  green,  — 
The  broken  millstone  at  the  sill,  — 

Though  many  a  rood  might  stretch  between, 
The  truant  child  could  see  them  still. 

No  rocks  across  the  pathway  lie,  — 
No  fallen  trunk  is  o'er  it  thrown,  — 

And  yet  it  winds,  we  know  not  why, 
And  turns  as  if  for  tree  or  stone. 

Perhaps  some  lover  trod  the  way 

With  shaking  knees  and  leaping  heart,  — 

And  so  it  often  runs  astray 

With  sinuous  sweep  or  sudden  start. 

Or  one,  perchance,  with  clouded  brain 
From  some  unholy  banquet  reeled,  — 

And  since,  our  devious  steps  maintain 
His  track  across  the  trodden  field. 

Nay,  deem  not  thus,  —  no  earthborn  will 

Could  ever  trace  a  faultless  line  ; 

Our  truest  steps  are  human  still,  — 

To  walk  unswerving  were  divine  I 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    103 

Truants  from  love,  we  dream  of  wrath  ;  — 

Oh,  rather  let  us  trust  the  more  ! 
Through  all  the  wanderings  of  the  path, 

We  still  can  see  our  Father's  door  ! 


V. 

The  Professor  finds  a  Fly  in  his  Teacup. 

I  have  a  long  theological  talk  to  relate,  which  must 
be  dull  reading  to  some  of  my  young  and  vivacious 
friends.  I  don't  know,  however,  that  any  of  them 
have  entered  into  a  contract  to  read  all  that  I  write, 
or  that  I  have  promised  always  to  write  to  please  them. 
What  if  I  should  sometimes  write  to  please  myself? 

Now  you  must  know  that  there  are  a  great  many 
things  which  interest  me,  to  some  of  which  this  or  that 
particular  class  of  readers  may  be  totally  indifferent. 
I  love  Nature,  and  human  nature,  its  thoughts,  affec 
tions,  dreams,  aspirations,  delusions,  —  Art  in  all  its 
forms,  —  virtu  in  all  its  eccentricities,  —  old  stories 
from  black-letter  volumes  and  yellow  manuscripts,  and 
new  projects  out  of  hot  brains  not  yet  imbedded  in  the 
snows  of  age.  I  love  the  generous  impulses  of  the 
reformer;  but  not  less  does  my  imagination  feed  it 
self  upon  the  old  litanies,  so  often  warmed  by  the  hu 
man  breath  upon  which  they  were  wafted  to  Heaven 
that  they  glow  through  our  frames  like  our  own  heart's 
blood.  I  hope  I  love  good  men  and  women ;  I  know 
that  they  never  speak  a  word  to  me,  even  if  it  be  of 
question  or  blame,  that  I  do  not  take  pleasantly,  if  it  is 
expressed  with  a  reasonable  amount  of  human  kindness. 

I  have  before  me  at  this  time  a  beautiful  and  affect 
ing  letter,  which  I  have  hesitated  to  answer,  though 


104    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  postmark  upon  it  gave  its  direction,  and  the  name 
is  one  which  is  known  to  all,  in  some  of  its  represen 
tatives.  It  contains  no  reproach,  only  a  delicately- 
hinted  fear.  Speak  gently,  as  this  dear  lady  has 
spoken,  and  there  is  no  heart  so  insensible  that  it  does 
not  answer  to  the  appeal,  no  intellect  so  virile  that  it 
does  not  own  a  certain  deference  to  the  claims  of  age 
of  childhood,  of  sensitive  and  timid  natures,  when  they 
plead  with  it  not  to  look  at  those  sacred  things  by  the 
broad  daylight  which  they  see  in  mystic  shadow. 
How  grateful  would  it  be  to  make  perpetual  peace 
with  these  pleading  saints  and  their  confessors,  by  the 
simple  act  that  silences  all  complainings!  Sleep, 
sleep,  sleep !  says  the  Arch-Enchantress  of  them  all, 
—  and  pours  her  dark  and  potent  anodyne,  distilled 
over  the  fires  that  consumed  her  foes,  —  its  large, 
round  drops  changing,  as  we  look,  into  the  beads  of 
her  convert's  rosary!  Silence!  the  pride  of  reason! 
cries  another,  whose  whole  life  is  spent  in  reasoning 
down  reason. 

I  hope  I  love  good  people,  not  for  their  sake,  but 
for  my  own.  And  most  assuredly,  if  any  deed  of 
wrong  or  word  of  bitterness  led  me  into  an  act  of  dis 
respect  towards  that  enlightened  and  excellent  class  of 
men  who  make  it  their  calling  to  teach  goodness  and 
their  duty  to  practise  it,  I  should  feel  that  I  had  done 
myself  an  injury  rather  than  them.  Go  and  talk  with 
any  professional  man  holding  any  of  the  medieval 
creeds,  choosing  one  who  wears  upon  his  features  the 
mark  of  inward  and  outward  health,  who  looks  cheer 
ful,  intelligent,  and  kindly,  and  see  how  all  your  pre 
judices  melt  away  in  his  presence !  It  is  impossible  to 
come  into  intimate  relations  with  a  large,  sweet  nature, 
such  as  you  may  often  find  in  this  class,  without  long- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    105 

ing  to  be  at  one  with  it  in  all  its  modes  of  being  and 
believing.  But  does  it  not  occur  to  you  that  one  may 
love  truth  as  he  sees  it,  and  his  race  as  he  views  it, 
better  than  even  the  sympathy  and  approbation  of 
many  good  men  whom  he  honors,  —  better  than  sleep 
ing  to  the  sound  of  the  Miserere  or  listening  to  the 
repetition  of  an  effete  Confession  of  Faith? 

The  three  learned  professions  have  but  recently 
emerged  from  a  state  of  quasi  barbarism.  None  of 
them  like  too  well  to  be  told  of  it,  but  it  must  be 
sounded  in  their  ears  whenever  they  put  on  airs. 
When  a  man  has  taken  an  overdose  of  laudanum,  the 
doctors  tell  us  to  place  him  between  two  persons  who 
shall  make  him  walk  up  and  down  incessantly ;  and  if 
he  still  cannot  be  kept  from  going  to  sleep,  they  say 
that  a  lash  or  two  over  his  back  is  of  great  assistance. 

So  we  must  keep  the  doctors  awake  by  telling  them 
that  they  have  not  yet  shaken  off  astrology  and  the 
doctrine  of  signatures,  as  is  shown  by  the  form  of 
their  prescriptions,  and  their  use  of  nitrate  of  silver, 
which  turns  epileptics  into  Ethiopians.  If  that  is  not 
enough,  they  must  be  given  over  to  the  scourgers,  who 
like  their  task  and  get  good  fees  for  it.  A  few  score 
years  ago,  sick  people  were  made  to  swallow  burnt 
toads  and  powdered  earthworms  and  the  expressed 
juice  of  wood-lice.  The  physician  of  Charles  I.  and 
II.  prescribed  abominations  not  to  be  named.  Bar 
barism,  as  bad  as  that  of  Congo  or  Ashantee.  Traces 
of  this  barbarism  linger  even  in  the  greatly  improved 
medical  science  of  our  century.  So  while  the  solemn 
farce  of  over-drugging  is  going  on,  the  world  over, 
the  harlequin  pseudo-science  jumps  on  to  the  stage, 
whip  in  hand,  with  half-a-dozen  somersets,  and  begins 
laying  about  him. 


106  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

In  1817,  perhaps  you  remember,  the  law  of  wager 
by  battle  was  unrepealed,  and  the  rascally  murderous, 
and  worse  than  murderous,  clown,  Abraham  Thornton, 
put  on  his  gauntlet  in  open  court  and  defied  the  appel 
lant  to  lift  the  other  which  he  threw  down.  It  was 
not  until  the  reign  of  George  II.  that  the  statutes 
against  witchcraft  were  repealed.  As  for  the  English 
Court  of  Chancery,  we  know  that  its  antiquated 
abuses  form  one  of  the  staples  of  common  proverbs 
and  popular  literature.  So  the  laws  and  the  lawyers 
have  to  be  watched  perpetually  by  public  opinion  as 
much  as  the  doctors  do. 

I  don't  think  the  other  profession  is  an  exception. 
When  the  Reverend  Mr.  Cauvin  and  his  associates 
burned  my  distinguished  scientific  brother,  —  he  was 
burned  with  green  fagots,  which  made  it  rather  slow 
and  painful,  —  it  appears  to  me  they  were  in  a  state 
of  religious  barbarism.  The  dogmas  of  such  people 
about  the  Father  of  Mankind  and  his  creatures  are  of 
no  more  account  in  my  opinion  than  those  of  a  council 
of  Aztecs.  If  a  man  picks  your  pocket,  do  you  not 
consider  him  thereby  disqualified  to  pronounce  any 
authoritative  opinion  on  matters  of  ethics  ?  If  a  man 
hangs  my  ancient  female  relatives  for  sorcery,  as  they 
did  in  this  neighborhood  a  little  while  ago,  or  burns 
my  instructor  for  not  believing  as  he  does,  I  care  no 
more  for  his  religious  edicts  than  I  should  for  those  of 
any  other  barbarian. 

Of  course,  a  barbarian  may  hold  many  true  opin 
ions;  but  when  the  ideas  of  the  healing  art,  of  the 
administration  of  justice,  of  Christian  love,  could  not 
exclude  systematic  poisoning,  judicial  duelling,  and 
murder  for  opinion's  sake,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
trust  the  verdict  of  that  time  relating  to  any  subject 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    107 

which  involves  the  primal  instincts  violated  in  these 
abominations  and  absurdities.  —  What  if  we  are  even 
now  in  a  state  of  semi  -barbarism  ? 

Perhaps  some  think  we  ought  not  to  talk  at  table 
about  such  things.  —  I  am  not  so  sure  of  that.  Reli 
gion  and  government  appear  to  me  the  two  subjects 
which  of  all  others  should  belong  to  the  common  talk 
of  people  who  enjoy  the  blessings  of  freedom.  Think, 
one  moment.  The  earth  is  a  great  factory-wheel, 
which,  at  every  revolution  on  its  axis,  receives  fifty 
thousand  raw  souls  and  turns  off  nearly  the  same 
number  worked  up  more  or  less  completely.  There 
must  be  somewhere  a  population  of  two  hundred  thou 
sand  million,  perhaps  ten  or  a  hundred  times  as  many, 
earth-born  intelligences.  Life,  as  we  call  it,  is  no 
thing  but  tho  edge  of  the  boundless  ocean  of  existence 
where  it  conies  on  soundings.  In  this  view,  I  do  not 
see  anything  so  fit  to  talk  about,  or  half  so  interesting, 
as  that  which  relates  to  the  innumerable  majority  of 
our  fellow-creatures,  the  dead-living,  who  are  hun 
dreds  of  thousands  to  one  of  the  live -living,  and  with 
whom  we  all  potentially  belong,  though  we  have  got 
tangled  for  the  present  in  some  parcels  of  fibrine,  al 
bumen,  and  phosphates,  that  keep  us  on  the  minority 
side  of  the  house.  In  point  of  fact,  it  is  one  of  the 
many  results  of  /Spiritualism  to  make  the  permanent 
destiny  of  the  race  a  matter  of  common  reflection  and 
discourse,  and  a  vehicle  for  the  prevailing  disbelief  of 
the  Middle-Age  doctrines  on  the  subject.  I  cannot 
help  thinking,  when  I  remember  how  many  conversa 
tions  my  friend  and  myself  have  reported,  that  it 
would  be  very  extraordinary,  if  there  were  no  mention 
of  that  class  of  subjects  which  involves  all  that  we 
have  and  all  that  we  hope,  not  merely  for  ourselves, 


108    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

but  for  the  dear  people  whom  we  love  best,  —  noble 
men,  pure  and  lovely  women,  ingenuous  children,  — 
about  the  destiny  of  nine  tenths  of  whom  you  know 
the  opinions  that  would  have  been  taught  by  those  old 
man-roasting,  woman-strangling  dogmatists.  —  How 
ever,  I  fought  this  matter  with  one  of  our  boarders  the 
other  day,  and  I  am  going  to  report  the  conversation^ 

The  divinity-student  came  down,  one  morning, 
looking  rather  more  serious  than  usual.  He  said  lit 
tle  at  breakfast-time,  but  lingered  after  the  others, 
so  that  I,  who  am  apt  to  be  long  at  the  table,  found 
myself  alone  with  him. 

When  the  rest  were  all  gone,  he  turned  his  chair 
round  towards  mine,  and  began. 

I  ani  afraid,  —  he  said,  —  you  express  yourself  a 
little  too  freely  on  a  most  important  class  of  subjects. 
Is  there  not  danger  in  introducing  discussions  or  al 
lusions  relating  to  matters  of  religion  into  common 
discourse  ? 

Danger  to  what  ?  —  I  asked. 

Danger  to  truth,  —  he  replied,  after  a  slight  pause. 

I  did  n't  know  Truth  was  such  an  invalid,  —  I  said. 
—  How  long  is  it  since  she  could  only  take  the  air  in 
a  close  carriage,  with  a  gentleman  in  a  black  coat  on 
the  box?  Let  me  tell  you  a  story,  adapted  to  young 
persons,  but  which  won't  hurt  older  ones. 

-  There  was  a  very  little  boy  who  had  one  of  those 
balloons  you  may  have  seen,  which  are  filled  with  light 
gas,  and  are  held  by  a  string  to  keep  them  from  run 
ning  off  in  aeronautic  voyages  on  their  own  account. 
This  little  boy  had  a  naughty  brother,  who  said  to 
him,  one  day,  —  Brother,  pull  down  your  balloon,  so 
that  I  can  look  at  it  and  take  hold  of  it.  Then  the 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.     109 

little  boy  pulled  it  down.  Now  the  naughty  brother 
had  a  sharp  pin  in  his  hand,  and  he  thrust  it  into 
the  balloon,  and  all  the  gas  oozed  out,  so  that  there 
was  nothing  left  but  a  shrivelled  skin. 

One  evening,  the  little  boy's  father  called  him  to 
the  window  to  see  the  moon,  which  pleased  him  very 
much ;  but  presently  he  said,  —  Father,  do  not  pull  the 
string  and  bring  down  the  moon,  for  my  naughty 
brother  will  prick  it,  and  then  it  will  all  shrivel  up 
and  we  shall  not  see  it  any  more. 

Then  his  father  laughed,  and  told  him  how  the 
moon  had  been  shining  a  good  while,  and  would  shine 
a  good  while  longer,  and  that  all  we  could  do  was  to 
keep  our  windows  clean,  never  letting  the  dust  get  too 
thick  on  them,  and  especially  to  keep  our  eyes  open, 
but  that  we  could  not  pull  the  moon  down  with  a 
string,  nor  prick  it  with  a  pin.  —  Mind  you  this,  too, 
the  moon  is  no  man's  private  property,  but  is  seen 
from  a  good  many  parlor- windows. 

—  Truth  is  tough.     It  will  not  break,  like  a  bub 
ble,  at  a  touch;  nay,  you  may  kick  it  about  all  day, 
like  a  football,  and  it  will  be  round  and  full  at  even 
ing.     Does  not  Mr.  Bryant  say,  that  Truth  gets  well 
if  she  is  run  over  by  a  locomotive,  while  Error  dies  of 
lockjaw  if  she  scratches  her  finger?     I  never  heard 
that  a  mathematician  was  alarmed  for  the  safety  of  a 
demonstrated  proposition.     I   think,  generally,  that 
fear  of  open  discussion  implies  feebleness  of  inward 
conviction,  and  great  sensitiveness  to  the  expression 
of  individual  opinion  is  a  mark  of  weakness. 

—  I  am  not  so  much  afraid  for  truth,  —  said  the 
divinity-student,  —  as  for  the  conceptions  of  truth  in 
the  minds  of  persons  not  accustomed  to  judge  wisely 
the  opinions  uttered  before  them. 


110  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Would  you,  then,  banish  all  allusions  to  matters 
of  this  nature  from  the  society  of  people  who  come 
together  habitually  ? 

I  would  be  very  careful  in  introducing  them,  —  said 
the  divinity-student. 

Yes,  but  friends  of  yours  leave  pamphlets  in  peo 
ple's  entries,  to  be  picked  up  by  nervous  misses  and 
hysteric  housemaids,  full  of  doctrines  these  people  do 
not  approve.  Some  of  your  friends  stop  little  chil 
dren  in  the  street,  and  give  them  books,  which  their 
parents,  who  have  had  them  baptized  into  the  Chris 
tian  fold  and  give  them  what  they  consider  proper 
religious  instruction,  do  not  think  fit  for  them.  One 
would  say  it  was  fair  enough  to  talk  about  matters 
thus  forced  upon  people's  attention. 

The  divinity-student  could  not  deny  that  this  was 
what  might  be  called  opening  the  subject  to  the  dis 
cussion  of  intelligent  people. 

But, — he  said, — the  greatest  objection  is  this, 
that  persons  who  have  not  made  a  professional  study 
of  theology  are  not  competent  to  speak  on  such  sub 
jects.  Suppose  a  minister  were  to  undertake  to  ex 
press  opinions  on  medical  subjects,  for  instance,  would 
you  not  think  he  was  going  beyond  his  province? 

I  laughed, — for  I  remembered  John  Wesley's 
"sulphur  and  supplication,"  and  so  many  other  cases 
where  ministers  had  meddled  with  medicine,  —  some 
times  well  and  sometimes  ill,  but,  as  a  general  rule, 
with  a  tremendous  lurch  to  quackery,  owing  to  their 
very  loose  way  of  admitting  evidence,  —  that  I  could 
not  help  being  amused. 

I  beg  your  pardon,  —  I  said,  —  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
impolite,  but  I  was  thinking  of  their  certificates  to 
patent  medicines.  Let  us  look  at  this  matter. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    Ill 

If  a  minister  had  attended  lectures  on  the  theory 
and  practice  of  medicine,  delivered  by  those  who  had 
studied  it  most  deeply,  for  thirty  or  forty  years,  at  the 
rate  cf  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  a  year,  —  if  he  had 
been  constantly  reading  and  hearing  read  the  most 
approved  text-books  on  the  subject,  —  if  he  had  seen 
medicine  actually  practised  according  to  different 
methods,  daily,  for  the  same  length  of  time,  —  I  should 
think,  that  if  a  person  of  average  understanding,  he 
was  entitled  to  express  an  opinion  on  the  subject  of 
medicine,  or  else  that  his  instructors  were  a  set  of 
ignorant  and  incompetent  charlatans. 

If,  before  a  medical  practitioner  would  allow  me 
to  enjoy  the  full  privileges  of  the  healing  art,  he 
expected  me  to  affirm  my  belief  in  a  considerable 
number  of  medical  doctrines,  drugs,  and  formulae, 
I  should  think  that  he  thereby  implied  my  right  to 
discuss  the  same,  and  my  ability  to  do  so,  if  I  knew 
how  to  express  myself  in  English. 

Suppose,  for  instance,  the  Medical  Society  should 
refuse  to  give  us  an  opiate,  or  to  set  a  broken  limb, 
until  we  had  signed  our  belief  in  a  certain  number 
of  propositions,  —  of  which  we  will  say  this  is  the 
first: — 

I.  All  men's  teeth  are  naturally  in  a  state  of  total 
decay  or  caries,  and,  therefore,  no  man  can  bite  until 
every  one  of  them  is  extracted  and  a  new  set  is  in 
serted  according  to  the  principles  of  dentistry  adopted 
by  this  Society. 

I,  for  one,  should  want  to  discuss  that  before  sign 
ing  my  name  to  it,  and  I  should  say  this :  —  Why, 
no,  that  is  n't  true.  There  are  a  good  many  bad  teeth, 
we  all  know,  but  a  great  many  more  good  ones.  You 
must  n't  trust  the  dentists  ;  they  are  all  the  time  look- 


112    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing  at  the  people  who  have  bad  teeth,  and  such  as  are 
suffering  from  toothache.  The  idea  that  you  must 
pull  out  every  one  of  every  nice  young  man  and  young 
woman's  natural  teeth!  Poh,  poh!  Nobody  believes 
that.  This  tooth  must  be  straightened,  that  must  be 
filled  with  gold,  and  this  other  perhaps  extracted,  but 
it  must  be  a  very  rare  case,  if  they  are  all  so  bad  as 
to  require  extraction;  and  if  they  are,  don't  blame  the 
poor  soul  for  it!  Don't  tell  us,  as  some  old  dentists 
used  to,  that  everybody  not  only  always  has  every 
tooth  in  his  head  good  for  nothing,  but  that  he  ought 
to  have  his  head  cut  off  as  a  punishment  for  that  mis 
fortune!  No,  I  can't  sign  Number  One.  Give  us 
Number  Two. 

II.  We  hold  that  no  man  can  be  well  who  does  not 
agree  with  our  views  of  the  efficacy  of  calomel,  and 
who  does  not  take  the  doses  of  it  prescribed  in  our 
tables,  as  there  directed. 

To  which  I  demur,  questioning  why  it  should  be  so, 
and  get  for  answer  the  two  following:  — 

III.  Every  man  who  does  not  take  our  prepared 
calomel,  as  prescribed  by  us  in  our  Constitution  and 
By-Laws,  is  and  must  be  a  mass  of  disease  from  head 
to  foot ;  it  being  self-evident  that  he  is  simultaneously 
affected  with  Apoplexy,  Arthritis,  Ascites,  Asphyxia, 
and  Atrophy;    with    Borborygmus,    Bronchitis,    and 
Bulimia ;  with  Cachexia,  Carcinoma,  and  Cretinismus ; 
and  so  on  through  the  alphabet,  to  Xerophthalmia  and 
Zona,    with    all   possible    and    incompatible    diseases 
which  are  necessary  to  make  up  a  totally  morbid  state ; 
and  he  will  certainly  die,  if  he  does  not  take  freely  of 
our  prepared  calomel,  to  be  obtained  only  of  one  of 
our  authorized  agents. 

IV.  No  man  shall  be  allowed  to  take  our  prepared 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    113 

calomel  who  does  not  give  in  his  solemn  adhesion 
to  each  and  all  of  the  above-named  and  the  following 
propositions  (from  ten  to  a  hundred)  and  show  his 
mouth  to  certain  of  our  apothecaries,  who  have  not 
studied  dentistry,  to  examine  whether  all  his  teeth 
have  been  extracted  and  a  new  set  inserted  according 
to  our  regulations. 

Of  course,  the  doctors  have  a  right  to  say  we  sha'n't 
have  any  rhubarb,  if  we  don't  sign  their  articles,  and 
that,  if,  after  signing  them,  we  express  doubts  (in  pub 
lic,  about  any  of  them,  they  will  cut  us  off  from  our 
jalap  and  squills,  —  but  then  to  ask  a  fellow  not  to 
discuss  the  propositions  before  he  signs  them  is  what 
I  should  call  boiling  it  down  a  little  too  strong ! 

If  we  understand  them,  why  can't  we  discuss  them? 
If  we  can't  understand  them,  because  we  have  n't 
taken  a  medical  degree,  what  the  Father  of  Lies  do 
they  ask  us  to  sign  them  for? 

Just  so  with  the  graver  profession.  Every  now  and 
then  some  of  its  members  seem  to  lose  common  sense 
and  common  humanity.  The  laymen  have  to  keep 
setting  the  divines  right  constantly.  Science,  for 
instance,  —  in  other  words,  knowledge,  —  is  not  the 
enemy  of  religion;  for,  if  so,  then  religion  would 
mean  ignorance.  But  it  is  often  the  antagonist  of 
school-divinity. 

Everybody  knows  the  story  of  early  astronomy  and 
the  school-divines.  Come  down  a  little  later,  Arch 
bishop  Usher,  a  very  learned  Protestant  prelate,  tells 
us  that  the  world  was  created  on  Sunday,  the  twenty- 
third  of  October,  four  thousand  and  four  years  before 
the  birth  of  Christ.  Deluge,  December  7th,  two 
thousand  three  hundred  and  forty -eight  years  B.  c.  — 
Yes,  and  the  earth  stands  on  an  elephant,  and  the 


114   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

elephant  on  a  tortoise.     One  statement  is  as  near  the 
truth  as  the  other. 

Again,  there  is  nothing  so  brutalizing  to  some  na 
tures  as  moral  surgery.  I  have  often  wondered  that 
Hogarth  did  not  add  one  more  picture  to  his  four 
stages  of  Cruelty.  Those  wretched  fools,  reverend 
divines  and  others,  who  were  strangling  men  and 
women  for  imaginary  crimes  a 'little  more  than  a  cen 
tury  ago  among  us,  were  set  right  by  a  layman,  and 
very  angry  it  made  them  to  have  him  meddle. 

The  good  people  of  Northampton  had  a  very  re 
markable  man  for  their  clergyman,  —  a  man  with  a 
brain  as  nicely  adjusted  for  certain  mechanical  pro 
cesses  as  Babbage's  calculating  machine.  The  com 
mentary  of  the  laymen  on  che  preaching  and  practis 
ing  of  Jonathan  Edwards  was,  that,  after  twrenty -three 
years  of  endurance,  they  turned  him  out  by  a  vote  of 
twenty  to  one,  and  passed  a  resolve  that  he  shoidd 
never  preach  for  them  again.  A  man's  logical  and 
analytical  adjustments  are  of  little  consequence,  com 
pared  to  his  primary  relations  with  Nature  and  truth; 
and  people  have  sense  enough  to  find  it  out  in  the 
long  run;  they  know  what  "logic"  is  worth. 

In  tjiat  miserable  delusion  referred  to  above,  the  rev 
erend  Aztecs  and  Fijians  argued  rightly  enough  from 
their  premises,  no  doubt,  for  many  men  can  do  this. 
But  common  sense  and  common  humanity  were  unfor 
tunately  left  out  from  their  premises,  and  a  layman 
had  to  supply  them.  A  hundred  more  years  and 
many  of  the  barbarisms  still  lingering  among  us  will, 
of  course,  have  disappeared  like  witch-hanging.  But 
people  are  sensitive  now,  as  they  were  then.  You  will 
see  by  this  extract  that  the  Rev.  Cotton  Mather  did 
not  like  intermeddling,  with  his  business  very  well. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    115 

"  Let  the  Levites  of  the  Lord  keep  close  to  their  In 
structions,"  he  says,  "and  God  will  smite  thro*  the 
loins  of  those  that  rise  up  against  them.  I  will  re 
port  unto  you  a  Thing  which  many  Hundreds  among 
us  know  to  be  true.  The  Godly  Minister  of  a  certain 
Town  in  Connecticut,  when  he  had  occasion  to  be 
absent  on  a  Lord's  Day  from  his  Flock,  employ 'd  an 
honest  Neighbour  of  some  small  Talents  for  a  Mechan- 
ick,  to  read  a  Sermon  out  of  some  good  Book  unto 
'em.  This  Honest,  whom  they  ever  counted  also  a 
Pious  Man,  had  so  much  conceit  of  his  Talents,  that 
instead  of  Reading  a  Sermon  appointed,  he  to  the 
Surprize  of  the  People,  fell  to  preaching  one  of  his 
own.  For  his  Text  he  took  these  Words,  '  Despise 
not  Prophecyings  '  /  and  in  his  Preachment  he  betook 
himself  to  bewail  the  JEnvy  of  the  Clergy  in  the  Land, 
in  that  they  did  not  wish  all  the  Lord's  People  to  be 
Prophets,  and  call  forth  Private  Brethren  publickly 
to  2>rophesie.  While  he  was  thus  in  the  midst  of  his 
Exercise,  God  smote  him  with  horrible  Madness  ;  he 
was  taken  ravingly  distracted ;  the  People  were  forc'd 
with  violent  Hands  to  carry  him  home.  ...  I  will 
not  mention  his  Name:  He  was  reputed  a  Pious 
Man."  —  This  is  one  of  Cotton  Mather's  "Remark 
able  Judgments  of  God,  on  Several  Sorts  of  Offen 
ders," —  and  the  next  cases  referred  to  are  the  Judg 
ments  on  the  "Abominable  Sacrilege"  of  not  paying 
the  Ministers'  Salaries. 

This  sort  of  thing  does  n't  do  here  and  now,  you  see, 
my  young  friend !  We  talk  about  our  free  institu 
tions  ;  —  they  are  nothing  but  a  coarse  outside  ma 
chinery  to  secure  the  freedom  of  individual  thought. 
The  President  of  the  United  States  is  only  the  engine- 
driver  of  our  broad-gauge  mail-train;  and  every  hon- 


116    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

est,  independent  thinker  has  a  seat  in  the  first-class 
cars  behind  him. 

—  There  is  something  in  what  you  say,  —  replied 
the  divinity-student ;  —  and  yet  it  seems  to  me  there 
are  places  and  times  where  disputed  doctrines  of  reli 
gion  should  not  be  introduced.  You  would  not  at 
tack  a  church  dogma  —  say  Total  Depravity  —  in  a 
lyceum-lecture,  for  instance? 

Certainly  not ;  I  should  choose  another  place,  —  I 
answered.  —  But,  mind  you,  at  this  table  I  think  it 
is  very  different.  I  shall  express  my  ideas  on  any 
subject  I  like.  The  laws  of  the  lecture-room,  to  which 
my  friends  and  myself  are  always  amenable,  do  not 
hold  here.  I  shall  not  often  give  arguments,  but 
frequently  opinions,  —  I  trust  with  courtesy  and  pro 
priety,  but,  at  any  rate,  with  such  natural  forms  of 
expression  as  it  has  pleased  the  Almighty  to  bestow 
upon  me. 

A  man's  opinions,  look  you,  are  generally  of  much 
more  value  than  his  arguments.  These  last  are  made 
by  his  brain,  and  perhaps  he  does  not  believe  the  prop 
osition  they  tend  to  prove,  —  as  is  often  the  case  with 
paid  lawyers ;  but  opinions  are  formed  by  our  whole 
nature,  —  brain,  heart,  instinct,  brute  life,  everything 
all  our  experience  has  shaped  for  us  by  contact  with 
the  whole  circle  of  our  being. 

-  There  is  one  thing  more,  —  said  the  divinity-stu 
dent,  —  that  I  wished  to  speak  of ;  I  mean  that  idea 
of  yours,  expressed  some  time  since,  of  depolarizing 
the  text  of  sacred  books  in  order  to  judge  them  fairly. 
May  I  ask  why  you  do  not  try  the  experiment  your 
self? 

Certainly,  —  I  replied,  —  if  it  gives  you  any  pleas 
ure  to  ask  foolish  questions.  I  think  the  ocean  tele- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    117 

graph-wire  ought  to  be  laid  and  will  be  laid,  but  I 
don't  know  that  you  have  any  right  to  ask  me  to  go 
and  lay  it.  But,  for  that  matter,  I  have  heard  a  good 
deal  of  Scripture  depolarized  in  and  out  of  the  pulpit. 
I  heard  the  Rev.  Mr.  F.  once  depolarize  the  story 
of  the  Prodigal  Son  in  Park-Street  Church.  Many 
years  afterwards,  I  heard  him  repeat  the  same  or  a 
similar  depolarized  version  in  Rome,  New  York.  I 
heard  an,  admirable  depolarization  of  the  story  of  the 
young  man  who  "  had  great  possessions "  from  the 
Rev.  Mr.  H.  in  another  pulpit,  and  felt  that  I  had 
never  half  understood  it  before.  All  paraphrases  are 
more  or  less  perfect  depolarizations.  But  I  tell  you 
this :  the  faith  of  our  Christian  community  is  not  ro 
bust  enough  to  bear  the  turning  of  our  most  sacred 
language  into  its  depolarized  equivalents.  You  have 
only  to  look  back  to  Dr.  Channing's  famous  Balti 
more  discourse  and  remember  the  shrieks  of  blas 
phemy  with  which  it  was  greeted,  to  satisfy  yourself 
on  this  point.  Time,  time  only,  can  gradually  wean 
us  from  our  Epeolatry,  or  word-worship,  by  spiritual 
izing  our  ideas  of  the  thing  signified.  Man  is  an  idol 
ater  or  symbol- worshipper  by  nature,  which,  of  course, 
is  no  fault  of  his ;  but  sooner  or  later  all  his  local  and 
temporary  symbols  must  be  ground  to  powder,  like 
the  golden  calf,  —  word-images  as  well  as  metal  and 
wooden  ones.  Rough  work,  iconoclasm,  —  but  the 
only  way  to  get  at  truth.  It  is,  indeed,  as  that 
quaint  and  rare  old  discourse,  "A  Summons  for  Sleep 
ers,"  hath  it,  "no  doubt  a  thankless  office,  and  a  verie 
unthriftie  occupation;  veritas  odium  parit,  truth 
never  goeth  without  a  scratcht  face ;  he  that  will  be 
busie  with  vce  vobis,  let  him  looke  shortly  for  coram 
nob  is." 


118   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


The  very  aim  and  end  of  our  institutions  is  just 
this :  that  we  may  think  what  we  like  and  say  what 
we  think. 

—  Think  what  we  like !  —  said  the  divinity-student ; 
—  think  what  we  like!  What!  against  all  human 
and  divine  authority? 

Against  all  human  versions  of  its  own  or  any  other 
authority.  At  our  own  peril  always,  if  we  do  not 
like  the  right,  —  but  not  at  the  risk  of  being  hanged 
and  quartered  for  political  heresy,  or  broiled  on  green 
fagots  for  ecclesiastical  treason !  Nay,  we  have  got  so 
far,  that  the  very  word  heresy  has  fallen  into  compar 
ative  disuse  among  us. 

And  now,  my  young  friend,  let  us  shake  hands  and 
stop  our  discussion,  which  we  will  not  make  a  quarrel. 
I  trust  you  know,  or  will  learn,  a  great  many  things 
in  your  profession  which  we  common  scholars  do  not 
know;  but  mark  this:  when  the  common  people  of 
New  England  stop  talking  politics  and  theology,  it 
will  be  because  they  have  got  an  Emperor  to  teach 
them  the  one,  and  a  Pope  to  teach  them  the  other ! 

That  was  the  end  of  my  long  conference  with  the 
divinity-student.  The  next  morning  we  got  talking 
a  little  on  the  same  subject,  very  good-naturedly,  as 
people  return  to  a  matter  they  have  talked  out. 

You  must  look  to  yourself,  —  said  the  divinity-stu 
dent,  —  if  your  democratic  notions  get  into  print. 
You  will  be  fired  into  from  all  quarters. 

If  it  were  only  a  bullet,  with  the  marksman's  name 
on  it!  —  I  said.  — I  can't  stop  to  pick  out  the  peep- 
shot  of  the  anonymous  scribblers. 

Right,  Sir !  right !  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman.  — 
The  scamps!  I  know  the  fellows.  They  can't  give 
fifty  cents  to  one  of  the  Antipodes,  but  they  must 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    119 

have  it  jingled  along  through  everybody's  palms  all 
the  way,  till  it  reaches  him,  —  and  forty  cents  of  it 
gets  spilt,  like  the  water  out  of  the  fire-buckets  passed 
along  a  "  lane  "  at  a  fire ;  —  but  when  it  comes  to  anon 
ymous  defamation,  putting  lies  into  people's  mouths, 
and  then  advertising  those  people  through  the  country 
as  the  authors  of  them,  —  oh,  then  it  is  that  they  let 
not  their  left  hand  know  what  their  right  hand  doeth ! 

I  don't  like  Ehud's  style  of  doing  business,  Sir. 
He  comes  along  with  a  very  sanctimonious  look,  Sir, 
with  his  "secret  errand  unto  thee,"  and  his  "  message 
from  God  unto  thee,"  and  then  pulls  out  his  hidden 
knife  with  that  unsuspected  hand  of  his,  —  (the  Little 
Gentleman  lifted  his  clenched  left  hand  with  the  blood- 
red  jewel  on  the  ring-finger,)  —  and  runs  it,  blade  and 
haft,  into  a  man's  stomach!  Don't  meddle  with 
these  fellows,  Sir.  They  are  read  mostly  by  persons 
whom  you  would  not  reach,  if  you  were  to  write  ever 
so  much.  Let  'em  alone.  A  man  whose  opinions 
are  not  attacked  is  beneath  contempt. 

I  hope  so,  —  I  said.  —  I  got  three  pamphlets  and 
innumerable  squibs  flung  at  my  head  for  attacking  one 
of  the  pseudo-sciences,  in  former  years.  When,  by 
the  permission  of  Providence,  I  held  up  to  the  pro 
fessional  public  the  damnable  facts  connected  with  the 
conveyance  of  poison  from  one  young  mother's  cham 
ber  to  another's, — for  doing  which  humble  office  I 
desire  to  be  thankful  that  I  have  lived,  though  no 
thing  else  good  should  ever  come  of  my  life,  —  I  had 
to  bear  the  sneers  of  those  whose  position  I  had  as 
sailed,  and,  as  I  believe,  have  at  last  demolished,  so 
that  nothing  but  the  ghosts  of  dead  women  stir  among 
the  ruins.  —  What  would  you  do,  if  the  folks  without 
names  kept  at  you,  trying  to  get  a  San  Benito  on  to 


120   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

your  shoulders  that  would  fit  you?  —  Would  you 
stand  still  in  fly-time,  or  would  you  give  a  kick  now 
and  then? 

Let  'em  bite !  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman,  —  let 
'em  bite!  It  makes  'em  hungry  to  shake  'em  off,  and 
they  settle  down  again  as  thick  as  ever  and  twice  as 
savage.  Do  you  know  what  meddling  with  the  folks 
without  names,  as  you  call  'em,  is  like?  —  It  is  like 
riding  at  the  quintain.  You  run  full  tilt  at  the 
board,  but  the  board  is  on  a  pivot,  with  a  bag  of  sand 
on  an  arm  that  balances  it.  The  board  gives  way  as 
soon  as  you  touch  it ;  and  before  you  have  got  by,  the 
bag  of  sand  comes  round  whack  on  the  back  of  your 
neck.  "Ananias,"  for  instance,  pitches  into  your  lec 
ture,  we  will  say,  in  some  paper  taken  by  the  people 
in  your  kitchen.  Your  servants  get  saucy  and  neg 
ligent.  If  their  newspaper  calls  you  names,  they  need 
not  be  so  particular  about  shutting  doors  softly  or 
boiling  potatoes.  So  you  lose  your  temper,  and  come 
out  in  an  article  which  you  think  is  going  to  finish 
"Ananias,"  proving  him  a  booby  who  does  n't  know 
enough  to  understand  even  a  lyceum-lecture,  or  else  a 
person  that  tells  lies.  Now  you  think  you  've  got 
him!  Not  so  fast.  "Ananias  "  keeps  still  and  winks 
to  "Shimei,"  and  "Shimei"  comes  out  in  the  paper 
which  they  take  in  your  neighbor's  kitchen,  ten  times 
worse  than  t'  other  fellow.  If  you  meddle  with 
"Shimei,"  he  steps  out,  and  next  week  appears 
"Rab-shakeh,"  an  unsavory  wretch;  and  now,  at  any 
rate,  you  find  out  what  good  sense  there  was  in  Heze- 
kiah's  "Answer  him  not."  —  No,  no, — keep  your 
temper.  —  So  saying,  the  Little  Gentleman  doubled 
his  left  fist  and  looked  at  it  as  if  he  should  like  to 
hit  something  or  somebody  a  most  pernicious  punch 
with  it. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    121 

Good !  —  said  I.  —  Now  let  me  give  you  some  ax 
ioms  I  have  arrived  at,  after  seeing  something  of  a 
great  many  kinds  of  good  folks. 

—  Of   a  hundred  people  of  each  of  the  different 
leading  religious  sects,  about  the  same  proportion  will 
be  safe  and  pleasant  persons  to  deal  and  to  live  with. 

—  There  are,  at  least,  three  real  saints  among  the 
women  to  one  among  the  men,  in  every  denomination. 

—  The  spiritual  standard  of  different  classes  I  would 
reckon  thus :  — 

1.  The  comfortably  rich. 

2.  The  decently  comfortable. 

3.  The  very  rich,  who  are  apt  to  be  irreligious. 

4.  The  very  poor,  who  are  apt  to  be  immoral. 

—  The  cut  nails  of  machine -divinity  may  be  driven 
in,  but  they  won't  clinch. 

—  The  arguments  which  the  greatest  of  our  school 
men  could  not  refute  were  two :  the  blood  in  men's 
veins,  and  the  milk  in  women's  breasts. 

—  Humility  is  the  first  of  the  virtues  —  for  other 
people. 

—  Faith  always  implies  the  disbelief  of  a  lesser  fact 
in  favor  of  a  greater.     A  little  mind  often  sees  the 
unbelief,  without  seeing  the  belief  of  a  large  one. 

The  Poor  Relation  had  been  fidgeting  about  and 
working  her  mouth  while  all  this  was  going  on.  She 
broke  out  in  speech  at  this  point. 

I  hate  to  hear  folks  talk  so.  I  don't  see  that  you 
are  any  better  than  a  heathen. 

I  wish  I  were,  half  as  good  as  many  heathens  have 
been,  —  I  said.  —  Dying  for  a  principle  seems  to  me 
a  higher  degree  of  virtue  than  scolding  for  it ;  and  the 
history  of  heathen  races  is  full  of  instances  where  men 
have  laid  down  their  lives  for  the  love  of  their  kind, 


122   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of  their  country,  of  truth,  nay,  even  for  simple  man 
hood's  sake,  or  to  show  their  obedience  or  fidelity. 
What  would  not  such  beings  have  done  for  the  souls 
of  men,  for  the  Christian  commonwealth,  for  the  King 
of  Kings,  if  they  had  lived  in  days  of  larger  light? 
Which  seems  to  you  nearest  heaven,  Socrates  drink 
ing  his  hemlock,  Regulus  going  back  to  the  enemy's 
camp,  or  that  old  New  England  divine  sitting  com 
fortably  in  his  study  and  chuckling  over  his  conceit 
of  certain  poor  women,  who  had  been  burned  to  death 
in  his  own  town,  going  "roaring  out  of  one  fire  into 
another  "  ? 

I  don't  believe  he  said  any  such  thing,  —  replied 
the  Poor  Relation. 

It  is  hard  to  believe,  —  said  I,  —  but  it  is  true  for 
all  that.  In  another  hundred  years  it  will  be  as  in 
credible  that  men  talked  as  we  sometimes  hear  them 
now. 

Pectus  est  quodfacit  iheologum.  The  heart  makes 
the  theologian.  Every  race,  every  civilization,  either 
has  a  new  revelation  of  its  own  or  a  new  interpreta 
tion  of  an  old  one.  Democratic'  America  has  a  dif 
ferent  humanity  from  feudal  Europe,  and  so  must 
have  a  new  divinity.  See,  for  one  moment,  how  in 
telligence  reacts  on  our  faiths.  The  Bible  was  a 
divining-book  to  our  ancestors,  and  is  so  still  in  the 
hands  of  some  of  the  vulgar.  The  Puritans  went  to 
the  Old  Testament  for  their  laws ;  the  Mormons  go 
to  it  for  their  patriarchal  institution.  Every  gener 
ation  dissolves  something  new  and  precipitates  some 
thing  once  held  in  solution  from  that  great  storehouse 
of  temporary  and  permanent  truths. 

You  may  observe  this:  that  the  conversation  of 
intelligent  men  of  the  stricter  sects  is  strangely  in 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    123 

advance  of  the  formulae  that  belong  to  their  organiza 
tions.  So  true  is  this,  that  I  have  doubts  whether  a 
large  proportion  of  them  would  not  have  been  rather 
pleased  than  offended,  if  they  could  have  overheard 
our  talk.  For,  look  you,  I  think  there  is  hardly  a 
professional  teacher  who  will  not  in  private  conversa 
tion  allow  a  large  part  of  what  we  have  said,  though 
it  may  frighten  him  in  print ;  and  I  know  well  what 
an  under-current  of  secret  sympathy  gives  vitality  to 
those  poor  words  of  mine  which  sometimes  get  a  hear 
ing. 

I  don't  mind  the  exclamation  of  any  old  stager  who 
drinks  Madeira  worth  from  two  to  six  Bibles  a  bottle, 
and  burns,  according  to  his  own  premises,  a  dozen 
souls  a  year  in  the  cigars  with  which  he  muddles  his 
brains.  But  as  for  the  good  and  true  and  intelli 
gent  men  whom  we  see  all  around  us,  laborious,  self- 
denying,  hopeful,  helpful,  —  men  who  know  that  the 
active  mind  of  the  century  is  tending  more  and  more 
to  the  two  poles,  Rome  and  Reason,  the  sovereign 
church  or  the  free  soul,  authority  or  personality,  God 
in  us  or  God  in  our  masters,  and  that,  though  a  man 
may  by  accident  stand  half-way  between  these  two 
points,  he  must  look  one  way  or  the  other,  —  I  don't 
believe  they  would  take  offence  at  anything  I  have 
reported  of  our  late  conversation. 

But  supposing  any  one  do  take  offence  at  first  sight, 
let  him  look  over  these  notes  again,  and  see  whether 
he  is  quite  sure  he  does  not  agree  with  most  of  these 
things  that  were  said  amongst  us.  If  he  agrees  with 
most  of  them,  let  him  be  patient  with  an  opinion  he 
does  not  accept,  or  an  expression  or  illustration  a  lit 
tle  too  vivacious.  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  report 
any  more  conversations  on  these  topics;  but  I  do  in- 


124  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sist  on  the  right  to  express  a  civil  opinion  on  this  class 
of  subjects  without  giving  offence,  just  when  and 
where  I  please,  —  unless,  as  in  the  lecture-room,  there 
is  an  implied  contract  to  keep  clear  of  doubtful  mat 
ters.  You  did  n't  think  a  man  could  sit  at  a  break 
fast-table  doing  nothing  but  making  puns  every  morn 
ing  for  a  year  or  two,  and  never  give  a  thought  to  the 
two  thousand  of  his  fellow-creatures  who  are  passing 
into  another  state  during  every  hour  that  he  sits  talk 
ing  and  laughing.  Of  course,  the  one  matter  that  a 
real  human  being  cares  for  is  what  is  going  to  become 
of  them  and  of  him.  And  the  plain  truth  is,  that  a 
good  many  people  are  saying  one  thing  about  it  and 
believing  another. 

—  How  do  I  know  that  ?  Why,  I  have  known  and 
loved  to  talk  with  good  people,  all  the  way  from  Rome 
to  Geneva  in  doctrine,  as  long  as  I  can  remember. 
Besides,  the  real  religion  of  the  world  comes  from 
women  much  more  than  from  men,  —  from  mothers 
most  of  all,  who  carry  the  key  of  our  souls  in  their 
bosoms.  It  is  in  their  hearts  that  the  "sentimental" 
religion  some  people  are  so  fond  of  sneering  at  has  its 
source.  The  sentiment  of  love,  the  sentiment  of  ma 
ternity,  the  sentiment  of  the  paramount  obligation  of 
the  parent  to  the  child  as  having  called  it  into  exis 
tence,  enhanced  just  in  proportion  to  the  power  and 
knowledge  of  the  one  and  the  weakness  and  ignorance 
of  the  other,  — these  are  the  "sentiments"  that  have 
kept  our  soulless  systems  from  driving  men  off  to  die 
in  holes  like  those  that  riddle  the  sides  of  the  hill  op 
posite  the  Monastery  of  St.  Saba,  where  the  miserable 
victims  of  a  falsely-interpreted  religion  starved  and 
withered  in  their  delusion. 

I  have  looked  on  the  face  of  a  saintly  woman  this 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    125 

very  day,  whose  creed  many  dread  and  hate,  but 
whose  life  is  lovely  and  noble  beyond  all  praise. 
When  I  remember  the  bitter  words  I  have  heard 
spoken  against  her  faith,  by  men  who  have  an  In 
quisition  which  excommunicates  those  who  ask  to  leave 
their  communion  in  peace,  and  an  Index  Expurgato- 
rius  on  which  this  article  may  possibly  have  the  honor 
of  figuring,  —  and,  far  worse  than  these,  the  reluctant, 
pharisaical  confession,  that  it  might  perhaps  be  pos 
sible  that  one  who  so  believed  should  be  accepted  of 
the  Creator,  —  and  then  recall  the  sweet  peace  and 
love  that  show  through  all  her  looks,  the  price  of  un 
told  sacrifices  and  labors,  —  and  again  recollect  how 
thousands  of  women,  filled  with  the  same  spirit,  die, 
without  a  murmur,  to  earthly  life,  die  to  their  own 
names  even,  that  they  may  know  nothing  but  their 
holy  duties,  —  while  men  are  torturing  and  denoun 
cing  their  fellows,  and  while  we  can  hear  day  and 
night  the  clinking  of  the  hammers  that  are  trying, 
like  the  brute  forces  in  the  "Prometheus,"  to  rivet 
their  adamantine  wedges  right  through  the  breast  of 
human  nature,  —  I  have  been  ready  to  believe  that  we 
have  even  now  a  new  revelation,  and  the  name  of  its 
Messiah  is  WOMAN  ! 

—  I  should  be  sorry,  —  I  remarked,  a  day  or  two 
aiterwards,  to  the  divinity-student,  —  if  anything  I 
said  tended  in  any  way  to  foster  any  jealousy  between 
the  professions,  or  to  throw  disrespect  upon  that  one 
on  whose  counsel  and  sympathies  almost  all  of  us  lean 
in  our  moments  of  trial.  But  we  are  false  to  our 
new  conditions  of  life,  if  we  do  not  resolutely  main 
tain  our  religious  as  well  as  our  political  freedom,  in 
the  face  of  any  and  all  supposed  monopolies.  Certain 
men  will,  of  course,  say  two  things,  if  we  do  not  take 


126   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

their  views :  first,  that  we  don't  know  anything  about 
these  matters;  and,  secondly,  that  we  are  not  so  good 
as  they  are.  They  have  a  polarized  phraseology  for 
saying  these  things,  but  it  comes  to  precisely  that. 
To  which  it  may  be  answered,  in  the  first  place,  that 
we  have  good  authority  for  saying  that  even  babes  and 
sucklings  know  something;  and,  in  the  second,  that, 
if  there  is  a  mote  or  so  to  be  removed  from  our  prem 
ises,  the  courts  and  councils  of  the  last  few  years  have 
found  beams  enough  in  some  other  quarters  to  build  a 
church  that  would  hold  all  the  good  people  in  Boston 
and  have  sticks  enough  left  to  make  a  bonfire  for  all 
the  heretics. 

As  to  that  terrible  depolarizing  process  of  mine,  of 
which  we  were  talking  the  other  day,  I  will  give  you  a 
specimen  of  one  way  of  managing  it,  if  you  like.  I 
don't  believe  it  will  hurt  you  or  anybody.  Besides,  I 
had  a  great  deal  rather  finish  our  talk  with  pleasant 
images  and  gentle  words  than  with  sharp  sayings, 
which  will  only  afford  a  text,  if  anybody  repeats 
them,  for  endless  relays  of  attacks  from  Messrs.  An 
anias,  Shimei,  and  Rab-shakeh. 

[I  must  leave  such  gentry,  if  any  of  them  show 
themselves,  in  the  hands  of  my  clerical  friends,  many 
of  whom  are  ready  to  stand  up  for  the  rights  of  the 
laity, — and  to  those  blessed  souls,  the  good  women, 
to  whom  this  version  of  the  story  of  a  mother's  hidden 
hopes  and  tender  anxieties  is  dedicated  by  their  peace 
ful  and  loving  servant.] 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    127 


A  MOTHER'S  SECRET. 

How  sweet  the  sacred  legend  —  if  unblamed 
In  my  slight  verse  such  holy  things  are  named  — 
Of  Mary's  secret  hours  of  hidden  joy, 
Silent,  but  pondering  on  her  wondrous  boy  ! 
Ave,  Maria  !     Pardon,  if  I  wrong 
Those  heavenly  words  that  shame  my  earthly  song ! 

The  choral  host  had  closed  the  angel's  strain 
Sung  to  the  midnight  watch  on  Bethlehem's  plain  ; 
And  now  the  shepherds,  hastening  on  their  way, 
Sought  the  still  hamlet  where  the  Infant  lay. 
They  passed  the  fields  that  gleaning  Ruth  toiled  o'er,  — 
They  saw  afar  the  ruined  threshing-floor 
Where  Moab's  daughter,  homeless  and  forlorn, 
Found  Boaz  slumbering  by  his  heaps  of  corn  ; 
And  some  remembered  how  the  holy  scribe, 
Skilled  in  the  lore  of  every  jealous  tribe, 
Traced  the  warm  blood  of  Jesse's  royal  son 
To  that  fair  alien,  bravely  wooed  and  won. 
So  fared  they  on  to  seek  the  promised  sign 
That  marked  the  anointed  heir  of  David's  line. 

At  last,  by  forms  of  earthly  semblance  led, 
They  found  the  crowded  inn,  the  oxen's  shed. 
No  pomp  was  there,  no  glory  shone  around 
On  the  coarse  straw  that  strewed  the  Peeking  ground  ; 
One  dim  retreat  a  flickering  torch  betrayed,  — 
In  that  poor  cell  the  Lord  of  Life  was  laid  ! 

The  wondering  shepherds  told  their  breathless  tale 
Of  the  bright  choir  that  woke  the  sleeping  vale  ; 
Told  how  the  skies  with  sudden  glory  flamed  ; 
Told  how  the  shining  multitude  proclaimed 
"  Joy,  joy  to  earth  !     Behold  the  hallowed  morn  ! 

In  David's  city  Christ  the  Lord  is  born  ! 
'  Glory  to  God  ! '  let  angels  shout  on  high, — 
'  Good-will  to  men  ! '  the  listening  Earth  reply  ! " 

They  spoke  with  hurried  words  and  accents  wild  ; 
Calm  in  his  cradle  slept  the  heavenly  child. 
No  trembling  word  the  mother's  joy  revealed,  — 
One  sigh  of  rapture,  and  her  lips  were  sealed  ; 


128   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Unmoved  she  saw  the  rustic  train  depart, 
But  kept  their  words  to  ponder  in  her  heart. 

Twelve  years  had  passed  ;  the  boy  was  fair  and  tall, 
Growing  in  wisdom,  finding  grace  with  all. 
The  maids  of  Nazareth,  as  they  trooped  to  fill 
Their  balanced  urns  beside  the  mountain-rill, 
The  gathered  matrons,  as  they  sat  and  spun, 
Spoke  in  soft  words  of  Joseph's  quiet  son. 
No  voice  had  reached  the  Galilean  vale 
Of  star-led  kings  or  awe-struck  shepherds'  tale  ; 
In  the  meek,  studious  child  they  only  saw 
The  future  Rabbi,  learned  in  Israel's  law. 

So  grew  the  boy  ;  and  now  the*  feast  was  near, 
When  at  the  holy  place  the  tribes  appear. 
Scarce  had  the  home-bred  child  of  Nazareth  seen 
Beyond  the  hills  that  girt  the  village-green, 
Save  when  at  midnight,  o'er  the  star-lit  sands, 
Snatched  from  the  steel  of  Herod's  murdering  bands, 
A  babe,  close-folded  to  his  mother's  breast, 
Through  Edom's  wilds  he  sought  the  sheltering  West. 

Then  Joseph  spake  :  "  Thy  boy  hath  largely  grown  ; 
Weave  him  fine  raiment,  fitting  to  be  shown  ; 
Fair  robes  beseem  the  pilgrim,  as  the  priest  : 
•   Goes  he  not  with  us  to  the  holy  feast  ?  " 

And  Mary  culled  the  flaxen  fibres  white  ; 
Till  eve  she  spun ;  she  spun  till  morning  light. 
The  thread  was  twined  ;  its  parting  meshes  through 
From  hand  to  hand  her  restless  shuttle  flew, 
Till  the  full  web  was  wound  upon  the  beam,  — 
Love's  curious  toil,  —  a  vest  without  a  seam  ! 

They  reach  the  holy  place,  fulfil  the  days 
To  solemn  feasting  given,  and  grateful  praise. 
At  last  they  turn,  and  far  Moriah's  height 
Melts  in  the  southern  sky  and  fades  from  sight. 
All  day  the  dusky  caravan  has  flowed 
In  devious  trails  along  the  winding  road,  — 
(For  many  a  step  their  homeward  path  attends, 
And  all  the  sons  of  Abraham  are  as  friends.) 
Evening  has  come,  —  the  hour  of  rest  and  joy  ;  — 
Hush  !  hush  !  — that  whisper,  —  "  Where  is  Mary's  boy  ? 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.  129 

O  weary  hour  !     O  aching  days  that  passed 
Filled  with  strange  fears,  each  wilder  than  the  last : 
The  soldier's  lance,  —  the  fierce  centurion's  sword,  — 
The  crushing  wheels  that  whirl  some  Roman  lord,  — 
The  midnight  crypt  that  sucks  the  captive's  breath,  — 
The  blistering  sun  on  Hiunom's  vale  of  death  ! 

Thrice  on  his  cheek  had  rained  the  morning  light, 
Thrice  on  his  lips  the  mildewed  kiss  of  night, 
Crouched  by  some  porphyry  column's  shining  plinth, 
Or  stretched  beneath  the  odorous  terebinth. 

At  last,  in  desperate  mood,  they  sought  once  more 
The  Temple's  porches,  searched  in  vain  before  ; 
They  found  him  seated  with  the  ancient  men,  — 
The  grim  old  rufflers  of  the  tongue  and  pen,  — 
Their  bald  heads  glistening  as  they  clustered  near, 
Their  gray  beards  slanting  as  they  turned  to  hear, 
Lost  in  half-envious  wonder  and  surprise 
That  lips  so  fresh  should  utter  words  so  wise. 

And  Mary  said,  —  as  one  who,  tried  too  long, 
Tells  all  her  grief  and  half  her  sense  of  wrong,  — 
"  What  is  this  thoughtless  thing  which  thou  hast  done  ? 
Lo,  we  have  sought  thee  sorrowing,  O  my  son  !  " 
Few  words  he  spake,  and  scarce  of  filial  tone,  — 
Strange  words,  their  sense  a  mystery  yet  unknown  ; 
Then  turned  with  them  and  left  the  holy  hill, 
To  all  their  mild  commands  obedient  still. 

The  tale  was  told  to  Nazareth's  sober  men, 
And  Nazareth's  matrons  told  it  oft  again  ; 
The  maids  retold  it  at  the  fountain's  side  ; 
The  youthful  shepherds  doubted  or  denied  ; 
It  passed  around  among  the  listening  friends, 
With  all  that  fancy  adds  and  fiction  lends, 
Till  newer  marvels  dimmed  the  young  renown 
Of  Joseph's  son,  who  talked  the  Rabbis  down. 

But  Mary,  faithful  to  its  lightest  word, 
Kept  in  her  heart  the  sayings  she  had  heard, 
Till  the  dread  morning  rent  the  Temple's  veil, 
And  shuddering  Earth  confirmed  the  wondrous  tale. 

Youth  fades  ;  love  droops  ;  the  leaves  of  friendship  fall ; 
A  mother's  secret  hope  outlives  them  all. 


130   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 


VI. 

You  don't  look  so  dreadful  poor  in  the  face  as  you 
did  a  while  back.  Bloated  some,  I  expect. 

This  was  the  cheerful  and  encouraging  and  elegant 
remark  with  which  the  Poor  Kelation  greeted  the  di 
vinity-student  one  morning. 

Of  course  every  good  man  considers  it  a  great  sacri 
fice  on  his  part  to  continue  living  in  this  transitory, 
unsatisfactory,  and  particularly  unpleasant  world. 
This  is  so  much  a  matter  of  course,  that  I  was  sur 
prised  to  see  the  divinity-student  change  color.  He 
took  a  look  at  a  small  and  uncertain-minded  glass 
which  hung  slanting  forward  over  the  chapped  side 
board.  The  image  it  returned  to  him  had  the  color 
of  a  very  young  pea  somewhat  over-boiled.  The  scen 
ery  of  a  long  tragic  drama  flashed  through  his  mind 
as  the  lightniiig-express-train  whishes  by  a  station: 
the  gradual  dismantling  process  of  disease;  friends 
looking  on,  sympathetic,  but  secretly  chuckling  over 
their  own  stomachs  of  iron  and  lungs  of  caoutchouc; 
nurses  attentive,  but  calculating  their  crop,  and  think 
ing  how  soon  it  will  be  ripe,  so  that  they  can  go  to 
your  neighbor,  who  is  good  for  a  year  or  so  longer; 
doctors  assiduous,  but  giving  themselves  a  mental 
shake,  as  they  go  out  of  your  door,  which  throws  off 
your  particular  grief  as  a  duck  sheds  a  raindrop  from 
his  oily  feathers;  undertakers  solemn,  but  happy; 
then  the  great  subsoil  cultivator,  who  plants,  but  never 
looks  for  fruit  in  his  garden ;  then  the  stone-cutter, 
who  puts  your  name  on  the  slab  which  has  been  wait 
ing  for  you  ever  since  the  birds  or  beasts  made  their 
tracks  on  the  new  red  sandstone;  then  the  grass  and 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    131 

the  dandelions  and  the  buttercups,  —  Earth  saying 
to  the  mortal  body,  with  her  sweet  symbolism,  "You 
have  scarred  my  bosom,  but  you  are  forgiven  " ;  then 
a  glimpse  of  the  soul  as  a  floating  consciousness  with 
out  very  definite  form  or  place,  but  dimly  conceived 
of  as  an  upright  column  of  vapor  or  mist  several  times 
larger  than  life-size,  so  far  as  it  could  be  said  to  have 
any  size  at  all,  wandering  about  and  living  a  thin  and 
half -awake  life  for  want  of  good  old-fashioned  solid 
matter  to  come  down  upon  with  foot  and  fist,  —  in 
fact,  having  neither  foot  nor  fist,  nor  conveniences 
for  taking  the  sitting  posture. 

And  yet  the  divinity-student  was  a  good  Christian, 
and  those  heathen  images  which  remind  one  of  the 
childlike  fancies  of  the  dying  Adrian  were  only  the 
efforts  of  his  imagination  to  give  shape  to  the  form 
less  and  position  to  the  placeless.  Neither  did  his 
thoughts  spread  themselves  out  and  link  themselves 
as  I  have  displayed  them.  They  came  confusedly  into 
his  mind  like  a  heap  of  broken  mosaics,  —  sometimes 
a  part  of  the  picture  complete  in  itself,  sometimes 
connected  fragments,  and  sometimes  only  single  sev 
ered  stones. 

They  did  not  diffuse  a  light  of  celestial  joy  over  his 
countenance.  On  the  contrary,  the  Poor  Relation's  re 
mark  turned  him  pale,  as  I  have  said ;  and  when  the 
terrible  wrinkled  and  jaundiced  looking-glass  turned 
him  green  in  addition,  and  he  saw  himself  in  it,  it 
seemed  to  him  as  if  it  were  all  settled,  and  his  book 
of  life  were  to  be  shut  not  yet  half -read,  and  go 
back  to  the  dust  of  the  under-ground  archives.  He 
coughed  a  mild  short  cough,  as  if  to  point  the  direc 
tion  in  which  his  downward  path  was  tending.  It 
was  an  honest  little  cough  enough,  so  far  as  appear- 


132   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ances  went.  But  coughs  are  ungrateful  things.  You 
find  one  out  in  the  cold,  take  it  up  and  nurse  it  and 
make  everything  of  it,  dress  it  up  warm,  give  it  all 
sorts  of  balsams  and  other  food  it  likes,  and  carry  it 
round  in  your  bosom  as  if  it  were  a  miniature  lapdog. 
And  by-and-by  its  little  bark  grows  sharp  and  savage, 
and  —  confound  the  thing!  —  you  find  it  is  a  wolf's 
whelp  that  you  have  got  there,  and  he  is  gnawing  in 
the  breast  where  he  has  been  nestling  so  long.  —  The 
Poor  Relation  said  that  somebody's  surrup  was  good 
for  folks  that  were  gettin'  into  a  bad  way.  —  The 
landlady  had  heard  of  desperate  cases  cured  by  cherry- 
pictorial. 

Whiskey  's  the  fellah,  —  said  the  young  man  John. 
—  Make  it  into  punch,  cold  at  dinner-time  'n'  hot  at 
bed-time.  I  '11  come  up  'n'  show  you  how  to  mix  it. 
Have  n't  any  of  you  seen  the  wonderful  fat  man 
exhibitin'  down  in  Hanover  Street? 

Master  Benjamin  Franklin  rushed  into  the  dialogue 
with  a  breezy  exclamation,  that  he  had  seen  a  great 
picter  outside  of  the  place  where  the  fat  man  was  ex 
hibitin'.  Tried  to  get  in  at  half-price,  but  the  man 
at  the  door  looked  at  his  teeth  and  said  he  was 
more  'n  ten  year  old. 

It  is  n't  two  years,  —  said  the  young  man  John,  — 
since  that  fat  fellah  was  exhibitin'  here  as  the  Livin' 
Skeleton.  Whiskey  —  that 's  what  did  it,  —  real 
Burbon  's  the  stuff.  Hot  water,  sugar,  'n'  jest  a 
little  shavin'  of  lemon-skin  in  it,  —  skin,  mind  you, 
none  o'  your  juice ;  take  it  o.ff  thin,  —  shape  of  one 
of  them  flat  curls  the  factory-girls  wear  on  the  sides 
of  their  foreheads. 

But  I  am  a  teetotaller,  —  said  the  divinity-student 
in  a  subdued  tone ;  —  not  noticing  the  enormous  length 
of  the  bow-string  the  young  fellow  had  just  drawn. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    133 

He  took  up  his  hat  and  went  out. 

I  think  you  have  worried  that  young  man  more  than 
you  meant,  —  I  said.  —  I  don't  believe  he  will  jump 
off  one  of  the  bridges,  for  he  has  too  much  principle ; 
but  I  mean  to  follow  him  and  see  where  he  goes,  for 
he  looks  as  if  his  mind  were  made  up  to  something. 

I  followed  him  at  a  reasonable  distance.  He 
walked  doggedly  along,  looking  neither  to  the  right 
nor  the  left,  turned  into  State  Street,  and  made  for 
a  well-known  Life-Insurance  Office.  Luckily,  the 
doctor  was  there  and  overhauled  him  on  the  spot. 
There  was  nothing  the  matter  with  him,  he  said,  and 
he  could  have  his  life  insured  as  a  sound  one.  He 
came  out  in  good  spirits,  and  told  me  this  soon  after. 

This  led  me  to  make  some  remarks  the  next  morn 
ing  on  the  manners  of  well-bred  and  ill-bred  people. 

I  began,  —  The  whole  essence  of  true  gentle-breed 
ing  (one  does  not  like  to  say  gentility)  lies  in  the  wish 
and  the  art  to  be  agreeable.  Good-breeding  is  sur 
face-  Christianity.  Every  look,  movement,  tone,  ex 
pression,  subject  of  discourse,  that  may  give  pain  to 
another  is  habitually  excluded  from  conversational 
intercourse.  This  is  the  reason  why  rich  people  are 
apt  to  be  so  much  more  agreeable  than  others. 

—  I  thought  you  were  a  great  champion  of  equality, 
—  said  the  discreet  and  severe  lady  who  had  accompa 
nied  our  young  friend,  the  Latin  Tutor's  daughter. 

I  go  politically  for  equality,  —  I  said,  —  and  so 
cially  for  the  quality. 

Who  are  the  "quality,"  —said  the  Model,  etc., — 
in  a  community  like  ours? 

I  confess  I  find  this  question  a  little  difficult  to  an 
swer,  —  I  said.  —  Nothing  is  better  known  than  the 


134  THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

distinction  of  social  ranks  which  exists  in  every  com 
munity,  and  nothing  is  harder  to  define.  The  great 
gentlemen  and  ladies  of  a  place  are  its  real  lords 
and  masters  and  mistresses;  they  are  the  quality, 
whether  in  a  monarchy  or  a  republic;  mayors  and 
governors  and  generals  and  senators  and  ex-presidents 
are  nothing  to  them.  How  well  we  know  this,  and 
how  seldom  it  finds  a  distinct  expression !  Now  I  tell 
you  truly,  I  believe  in  man  as  man,  and  I  disbelieve 
in  all  distinctions  except  such  as  follow  the  natural 
lines  of  cleavage  in  a  society  which  has  crystallized 
according  to  its  own  true  laws.  But  the  essence  of 
equality  is  to  be  able  to  say  the  truth ;  and  there  is 
nothing  more  curious  than  these  truths  relating  to  the 
stratification  of  society. 

Of  all  the  facts  in  this  world  that  do  not  take  hold 
of  immortality,  there  is  not  one  so  intensely  real,  per 
manent,  and  engrossing  as  this  of  social  position,  —  as 
you  see  by  the  circumstances  that  the  core  of  all  the 
great  social  orders  the  world  has  seen  has  been,  and  is 
still,  for  the  most  part,  a  privileged  class  of  gentlemen 
and  ladies  arranged  in  a  regular  scale  of  precedence 
among  themselves,  but  superior  as  a  body  to  all  else. 

Nothing  but  an  ideal  Christian  equality,  which  we 
have  been  getting  farther  away  from  since  the  days  of 
the  Primitive  Church,  can  prevent  this  subdivision  of 
society  into  classes  from  taking  place  everywhere,  — 
in  the  great  centres  of  our  republic  as  much  as  in  old 
European  monarchies.  Only  there  position  is  more 
absolutely  hereditary,  —  here  it  is  more  completely 
elective. 

—  Where  is  the  election  held?  and  what  are  the 
qualifications?  and  who  are  the  electors?  —  said  the 
Model. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    135 

Nobody  ever  sees  when  the  vote  is  taken;  there 
never  is  a  formal  vote.  The  women  settle  it  mostly ; 
and  they  know  wonderfully  well  what  is  presentable, 
and  what  can't  stand  the  blaze  of  the  chandeliers  and 
the  critical  eye  and  ear  of  people  trained  to  know  a 
staring  shade  in  a  ribbon,  a  false  light  in  a  jewel,  an 
ill-bred  tone,  an  angular  movement,  everything  that 
betrays  a  coarse  fibre  and  cheap  training.  As  a  gen 
eral  thing,  you  do  not  get  elegance  short  of  two  or 
three  removes  from  the  soil,  out  of  which  our  best 
blood  doubtless  comes,  — quite  as  good,  no  doubt,  as 
if  it  came  from  those  old  prize-fighters  with  iron  pots 
on  their  heads,  to  whom  some  great  people  are  so  fond 
of  tracing  their  descent  through  a  line  of  small  arti 
sans  and  petty  shopkeepers  whose  veins  have  held 
"base"  fluid  enough  to  fill  the  Cloaca  Maxima! 

Does  not  money  go  everywhere  ?  —  said  the  Model. 

Almost.  And  with  good  reason.  For  though 
there  are  numerous  exceptions,  rich  people  are,  as  I 
said,  commonly  altogether  the  most  agreeable  com 
panions.  The  influence  of  a  fine  house,  graceful  fur 
niture,  good  libraries,  well-ordered  tables,  trim  ser 
vants,  and,  above  all,  a  position  so  secure  that  one 
becomes  unconscious  of  it,  gives  a  harmony  and  re 
finement  to  the  character  and  manners  which  we  feel, 
if  we  cannot  explain  their  charm.  Yet  we  can  get  at 
the  reason  of  it  by  thinking  a  little. 

All  these  appliances  are  to  shield  the  sensibility 
from  disagreeable  contacts,  and  to  soothe  it  by  va 
ried  natural  and  artificial  influences.  In  this  way  the 
mind,  the  taste,  the  feelings,  grow  delicate,  just  as 
the  hands  grow  white  and  soft  when  saved  from  toil 
and  incased  in  soft  gloves.  The  whole  nature  becomes 
subdued  into  suavity.  I  confess  I  like  the  quality- 


136    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ladies  better  than  the  common  kind  even  of  literary 
ones.  They  have  n't  read  the  last  book,  perhaps,  but 
they  attend  better  to  you  when  you  are  talking  to 
them.  If  they  are  never  learned,  they  make  up  for  it 
in  tact  and  elegance.  Besides,  I  think,  on  the  whole, 
there  is  less  self-assertion  in  diamonds  than  in  dog 
mas.  I  don't  know  where  you  will  find  a  sweeter 
portrait  of  humility  than  in  Esther,  the  poor  play-girl 
of  King  Ahasuerus ;  yet  Esther  put  on  her  royal  ap 
parel  when  she  went  before  her  lord.  I  have  no  doubt 
she  was  a  more  gracious  and  agreeable  person  than 
Deborah,  who  judged  the  people  and  wrote  the  story 
of  Sisera.  The  wisest  woman  you  talk  with  is  igno 
rant  of  something  that  you  know,  but  an  elegant  wo 
man  never  forgets  her  elegance. 

Dowdyism  is  clearly  an  expression  of  imperfect 
vitality.  The  highest  fashion  is  intensely  alive,  —  not 
alive  necessarily  to  the  truest  and  best  things,  but  with 
its  blood  tingling,  as  it  were,  in  all  its  extremities  and 
to  the  farthest  point  of  its  surface,  so  that  the  feather 
in  its  bonnet  is  as  fresh  as  the  crest  of  a  fighting- 
cock,  and  the  rosette  on  its  slipper  as  clean-cut  and 
pimpant  (pronounce  it  English  fashion,  —  it  is  a  good 
word)  as  a  dahlia.  As  a  general  rule,  that  society 
where  flattery  is  acted  is  much  more  agreeable  than 
that  where  it  is  spoken.  Don't  you  see  why?  At 
tention  and  deference  don't  require  you  to  make  fine 
speeches  expressing  your  sense  of  unworthiness  (lies) 
and  returning  all  the  compliments  paid  you.  This  is 
one  reason. 

—  A  woman  of  sense  ought  to  be  above  flattering 
any  man,  —  said  the  Model. 

[My  reflection.  Oh !  oh !  no  wonder  you  did  n't 
get  married.  Served  jou  right.]  My  remark. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    137 

Surely,  Madam,  —  if  you  mean  by  flattery  telling  peo 
ple  boldly  to  their  faces  that  they  are  this  or  that, 
which  they  are  not.  But  a  woman  who  does  not  carry 
about  with  her  wherever  she  goes  a  halo  of  good  feel 
ing  and  desire  to  make  everybody  contented,  —  an  at 
mosphere  of  grace,  mercy,  and  peace,  of  at  least  six 
feet  radius,  which  wraps  every  human  being  upon 
whom  she  voluntarily  bestows  her  presence,  and  so 
flatters  him  with  the  comfortable  thought  that  she  is 
rather  glad  he  is  alive  than  otherwise,  is  n't  worth  the 
trouble  of  talking  to,  as  a  woman ;  she  may  do  well 
enough  to  hold  discussions  with. 

—  I  don't  think  the  Model  exactly  liked  this.     She 
said,  —  a  little  spitefully,  I  thought,  —  that  a  sensible 
man  might  stand  a  little  praise,  but  would  of  course 
soon  get  sick  of  it,  if  he  were  in  the  habit  of  getting 
much. 

Oh,  yes,  —  I  replied,  —  just  as  men  get  sick  of  to 
bacco.  It  is  notorious  how  apt  they  are  to  get  tired 
of  that  vegetable. 

—  That 's  so !  —  said  the  young  fellow  John,  —  I  've 
got  tired  of  my  cigars  and  burnt  'em  all  up. 

I  am  heartily  glad  to  hear  it,  —  said  the  Model,  — 
I  wish  they  were  all  disposed  of  in  the  same  way. 

So  do  I,  —  said  the  young  fellow  John. 

Can't  you  get  your  friends  to  unite  with  you  in  com 
mitting  those  odious  instruments  of  debauchery  to  the 
flames  in  which  you  have  consumed  your  own  ? 

I  wish  I  could,  —  said  the  young  fellow  John. 

It  would  be  a  noble  sacrifice,  —  said  the  Model,  — 
and  every  American  woman  would  be  grateful  to  you. 
Let  us  burn  them  all  in  a  heap  out  in  the  yard. 

That  a'n't  my  way,  — said  the  young  fellow  John; 
—  I  burn  'em  one  't'  time,  — little  end  in  my  mouth 
and  big  end  outside. 


138   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

—  I  watched  for  the  effect  of  this  sudden  change  of 
programme,  when  it  should  reach  the  calm  stillness 
of  the  Model's  interior  apprehension,  as  a  boy  watches 
for  the  splash  of  a  stone  which  he  has  dropped  into  a 
well.     But   before   it  had  fairly  reached  the  water, 
poor  Iris,  who  had  followed  the  conversation  with  a 
certain    interest   until    it   turned   this  sharp   corner, 
(for  she  seems  rather  to  fancy  the  young  fellow  John,) 
laughed  out  such  a  clear,  loud  laugh,  that  it  started 
us  all  off,  as  the  locust-cry  of  some  full-throated  so 
prano  drags  a  multitudinous  chorus  after  it.     It  was 
plain  that  some  dam  or  other  had  broken  in  the  soul 
of  this  young  girl,  and  she  was  squaring  up  old  scores 
of  laughter,  out  of  which  she  had  been  cheated,  with 
a  grand  flood  of  merriment  that  swept  all  before  it. 
So  we   had   a   great  laugh  all   round,  in  which  the 
Model  —  who,  if  she  had  as   many  virtues  as  there 
are  spokes  to  a  wheel,  all  compacted  with  a  personal 
ity  as  round   and   complete  as  its  tire,  yet  wanted 
that   one   little    addition   of   grace,  which   seems   so 
small,  and  is  as  important  as  the  linchpin  in  trun 
dling  over  the  rough  ways  of  life  —  had  not  the  tact 
to  join.     She  seemed  to  be  "stuffy"  about  it,  as  the 
young  fellow  John  said.     In  fact,  I  was  afraid  the 
joke  would  have  cost  us  both  our  new  lady-boarders. 
It  had  no  effect,  however,  except,  perhaps,  to  hasten 
the  departure  of  the  elder  of  the  two,  who  could,  on 
the  whole,  be  spared. 

—  I  had  meant  to  make  this  note  of  our  conversa 
tion  a  text  for  a  few  axioms  on  the  matter  of  breeding. 
But  it  so  happened,  that,  exactly  at  this  point  of  my 
record,  a  very  distinguished  philosopher,  whom  several 
of  our  boarders  and  myself  go  to  hear,  and  whom  no 
doubt  many  of  my  readers  follow  habitually,  treated 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    139 

this  matter  of  manners.  Up  to  this  point,  if  I  have 
been  so  fortunate  as  to  coincide  with  him  in  opinion, 
and  so  unfortunate  as  to  try  to  express  what  he  has 
more  felicitously  said,  nobody  is  to  blame ;  for  what 
has  been  given  thus  far  was  all  written  before  the  lec 
ture  was  delivered.  But  what  shall  I  do  now?  He 
told  us  it  was  childish  to  lay  down  rules  for  deport 
ment,  —  but  he  could  not  help  laying  down  a  few. 

Thus,  —  Nothing  so  vulgar  as  to  be  in  a  hurry.  — 
True,  but  hard  of  application.  People  with  short  legs 
step  quickly,  because  legs  are  pendulums,  and  swing 
more  times  in  a  minute  the  shorter  they  are.  Gener 
ally  a  natural  rhythm  runs  through  the  whole  organiza 
tion  :  quick  pulse,  fast  breathing,  hasty  speech,  rapid 
trains  of  thought,  excitable  temper.  Stillness  of  per 
son  and  steadiness  of  features  are  signal  marks  of 
good-breeding.  Vulgar  persons  can't  sit  still,  or,  at 
least,  they  must  work  their  limbs  or  features. 

Talking  of  one's  own  ails  and  grievances.  —  Bad 
enough,  but  not  so  bad  as  insulting  the  person  you 
talk  with  by  remarking  on  his  ill-looks,  or  appearing 
to  notice  any  of  his  personal  peculiarities. 

Apologizing.  — A  very  desperate  habit,  — one  that 
is  rarely  cured.  Apology  is  only  egotism  wrong  side 
out.  Nine  times  out  of  ten,  the  first  thing  a  man's 
companion  knows  of  his  shortcoming  is  from  his  apol 
ogy.  It  is  mighty  presumptuous  on  your  part  to  sup 
pose  your  small  failures  of  so  much  consequence  that 
you  must  make  a  talk  about  them. 

Good  dressing,  quiet  ways,  low  tones  of  voice,  lips 
that  can  wait,  and  eyes  that  do  not  wander,  —  shyness 
of  personalities,  except  in  certain  intimate  commu 
nions,  —  to  be  light  in  hand  in  conversation,  to  have 
ideas,  but  to  be  able  to  make  talk,  if  necessary,  with- 


140   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

out  them,  —  to  belong  to  the  company  you  are  in,  and 
not  to  yourself,  —  to  have  nothing  in  your  dress  or 
furniture  so  fine  that  you  cannot  afford  to  spoil  it 
and  get  another  like  it,  yet  to  preserve  the  harmonies, 
throughout  your  person  and  dwelling:  I  should  say 
that  this  v.ras  a  fair  capital  of  manners  to  begin  with. 
Under  bad  manners,  as  under  graver  faults,  lies 
very  commonly  an  overestimate  of  our  special  individ 
uality,  as  distinguished  from  our  generic  humanity. 
It  is  just  here  that  the  very  highest  society  asserts  its 
superior  breeding.  Among  truly  elegant  people  of 
the  highest  ton,  you  will  find  more  real  equality  in 
social  intercourse  than  in  a  country  village.  As  nuns 
drop  their  birth-names  and  become  Sister  Margaret 
and  Sister  Mary,  so  high-bred  people  drop  their  per 
sonal  distinctions  and  become  brothers  and  sisters  of 
conversational  charity.  Nor  are  fashionable  people 
without  their  heroism.  I  believe  there  are  men  who 
have  shown  as  much  self-devotion  in  carrying  a  lone 
wall-flower  down  to  the  supper-table  as  ever  saint  or 
martyr  in  the  act  that  has  canonized  his  name.  There 
are  Florence  Nightingales  of  the  ballroom,  whom  no 
thing  can  hold  back  from  their  errands  of  mercy. 
They  find  out  the  red-handed,  gloveless  undergradu 
ate  of  bucolic  antecedents,  as  he  squirms  in  his  corner, 
and  distil  their  soft  words  upon  him  like  dew  upon 
the  green  herb.  They  reach  even  the  poor  relation, 
whose  dreary  apparition  saddens  the  perfumed  atmos 
phere  of  the  sumptuoas  drawing-room.  I  have  known 
one  of  these  angels  ask,  of  her  oivn  accord,  that  a  des 
olate  middle-aged  man,  whom  nobody  seemed  to  know, 
should  be  presented  to  her  by  the  hostess.  He  wore 
no  shirt-collar,  —  he  had  on  black  gloves,  —  and  was 
flourishing  a  red  bandanna  handkerchief  !  Match  me 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    141 

this,  ye  proud  children  of  poverty,  who  boast  of  your 
paltry  sacrifices  for  each  other !  Virtue  in  humble 
life !  What  is  that  to  the  glorious  self-renunciation  of 
a  martyr  in  pearls  and  diamonds  ?  As  I  saw  this  no 
ble  woman  bending  gracefully  before  the  social  men 
dicant,  —  the  white  billows  of  her  beauty  heaving  un 
der  the  foam  of  the  traitorous  laces  that  half  revealed 
them,  —  I  should  have  wept  with  sympathetic  emo 
tion,  but  that  tears,  except  as  a  private  demonstration, 
are  an  ill-disguised  expression  of  self-consciousness 
and  vanity,  which  is  inadmissible  in  good  society. 

I  have  sometimes  thought,  with  a  pang,  of  the  po 
sition  in  which  political  chance  or  contrivance  might 
hereafter  place  some  one  of  our  fellow-citizens.  It 
has  happened  hitherto,  so  far  as  my  limited  knowledge 
goes,  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  has 
always  been  what  might  be  called  in  general  terms  a 
gentleman.  But  what  if  at  some  future  time  the 
choice  of  the  people  should  fall  upon  one  on  whom 
that  lofty  title  could  not,  by  any  stretch  of  charity,  be 
bestowed  ?  This  may  happen,  —  how  soon  the  future 
only  knows.  Think  of  this  miserable  man  of  coming 
political  possibilities,  —  an  unpresentable  boor  sucked 
into  office  by  one  of  those  eddies  in  the  flow  of  popu 
lar  sentiment  which  carry  straws  and  chips  into  the 
public  harbor,  while  the  prostrate  trunks  of  the  mon- 
archs  of  the  forest  hurry  down  on  the  senseless  stream 
to  the  gulf  of  political  oblivion  I  Think  of  him,  I  say, 
and  of  the  concentrated  gaze  of  good  society  through 
its  thousand  eyes,  all  confluent,  as  it  were,  in  one  great 
burning-glass  of  ice  that  shrivels  its  wretched  object 
in  fiery  torture,  itself  cold  as  the  glacier  of  an  un 
sunned  cavern !  No,  —  there  will  be  angels  of  good- 
breeding  then  as  now,  to  shield  the  victim  of  free  in- 


142   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

stitutions  from  himself  and  from  his  torturers.  I  can 
fancy  a  lovely  woman  playfully  withdrawing  the  knife 
which  he  would  abuse  by  making  it  an  instrument  for 
the  conveyance  of  food,  —  or,  failing  in  this  kind  ar 
tifice,  sacrificing  herself  by  imitating  his  use  of  that 
implement;  how  much  harder  than  to  plunge  it  into 
her  bosom,  like  Lucretia !  I  can  see  her  studying  in 
his  provincial  dialect  until  she  becomes  the  Champol- 
lion  of  New  England  or  Western  or  Southern  barba 
risms.  She  has  learned  that  Jiaow  means  what ;  that 
ihinkin'  is  the  same  thing  as  thinking,  or  she  has 
found  out  the  meaning  of  that  extraordinary  mono 
syllable,  which  no  single-tongued  phonographer  can 
make  legible,  prevailing  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson 
and  at  its  embouchure,  and  elsewhere,  —  what  they 
say  when  they  think  they  say  first,  (je-eest,  — fe  as 
in  the  French  le),  —  or  that  cheer  means  chair,  —  or 
that  urritation  means  irritation,  —  and  so  of  other 
enormities.  Nothing  surprises  her.  The  highest 
breeding,  you  know,  comes  round  to  the  Indian  stand 
ard,  —  to  take  everything  coolly,  —  nil  admirari,  — 
if  you  happen  to  be  learned  and  like  the  Roman 
phrase  for  the  same  thing. 

If  you  like  the  company  of  people  that  stare  at  you 
from  head  to  foot  to  see  if  there  is  a  hole  in  your  coat, 
or  if  you  have  not  grown  a  little  older,  or  if  your 
eyes  are  not  yellow  with  jaundice,  or  if  your  complex 
ion  is  not  a  little  faded,  and  so  on,  and  then  convey 
the  fact  to  you,  in  the  style  in  which  the  Poor  Rela 
tion  addressed  the  divinity-student,  —  go  with  them  as 
much  as  you  like.  I  hate  the  sight  of  the  wretches. 
Don't  for  mercy's  sake  think  I  hate  them ;  the  dis 
tinction  is  one  my  friend  or  I  drew  long  ago.  No 
matter  where  you  find  such  people ;  they  are  clowns. 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    143 

The  rich  woman  who  looks  and  talks  in  this  way  is 
not  half  so  much  a  lady  as  her  Irish  servant,  whose 
pretty  "saving  your  presence,"  when  she  has  to  say 
something  which  offends  her  natural  sense  of  good  man 
ners,  has  a  hint  in  it  of  the  breeding  of  courts,  and 
the  blood  of  old  Milesian  kings,  which  very  likely 
runs  in  her  veins,  —  thinned  by  two  hundred  years  of 
potato,  which,  being  an  underground  fruit,  tends  to 
drag  down  the  generations  that  are  made  of  it  to  the 
earth  from  which  it  ca^ie,  and,  filling  their  veins  with 
starch,  turn  them  into  a  kind  of  human  vegetable. 

I  say,  if  you  like  such  people,  go  with  them.  But 
I  am  going  to  make  a  practical  application  of  the  ex 
ample  at  the  beginning  of  this  particular  record,  which 
some  young  people  who  are  going  to  choose  profes 
sional  advisers  by-and-by  may  remember  and  thank 
me  for.  If  you  are  making  choice  of  a  physician, 
be  sure  you  get  one,  if  possible,  with  a  cheerful  and 
serene  countenance.  A  physician  is  not  —  at  least, 
ought  not  to  be  —  an  executioner ;  and  a  sentence  of 
death  on  his  face  is  as  bad  as  a  warrant  for  execution 
signed  by  the  Governor.  As  a  general  rule,  no  man 
has  a  right  to  tell  another  by  word  or  look  that  he  is 
going  to  die.  It  may  be  necessary  in  some  extreme 
cases ;  but  as  a  rule,  it  is  the  last  extreme  of  imperti 
nence  which  one  human  being  can  offer  to  another. 
"You  have  killed  me,"  said  a  patient  once  to  a  phy 
sician  who  had  rashly  told  him  he  was  incurable.  He 
ought  to  have  lived  six  months,  but  he  was  dead  in  six 
weeks.  If  we  will  only  let  Nature  and  the  God  of 
Nature  alone,  persons  will  commonly  learn  their  con 
dition  as  early  as  they  ought  to  know  it,  and  not  be 
cheated  out  of  their  natural  birthright  of  hope  of  re 
covery,  which  is  intended  to  accompany  sick  people  as 


144   THE  PEOFESSOE  AT  THE  BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

long  as  life  is  comfortable,  and  is  graciously  replaced 
by  the  hope  of  heaven,  or  at  least  of  rest,  when  life 
has  become  a  burden  which  the  bearer  is  ready  to  let 
fall. 

Underbred  people  tease  their  sick  and  dying  friends 
to  death.  The  chance  of  a  gentleman  or  lady  with  a 
given  mortal  ailment  to  live  a  certain  time  is  as  good 
again  as  that  of  the  common  sort  of  coarse  people. 
As  you  go  down  the  social  scale,  you  reach  a  point  at 
length  where  the  common  talk  in  sick  rooms  is  of 
churchyards  and  sepulchres,  and  a  kind  of  perpetual 
vivisection  is  forever  carried  on,  upon  the  person  of 
the  miserable  sufferer. 

And  so,  in  choosing  your  clergyman,  other  things 
being  equal,  prefer  the  one  of  a  wholesome  and  cheer 
ful  habit  of  mind  and  body.  If  you  can  get  along 
with  people  who  carry  a  certificate  in  their  faces  that 
their  goodness  is  so  great  as  to  make  them  very  mis 
erable,  your  children  cannot.  And  whatever  offends 
one  of  these  little  ones  cannot  be  right  in  the  eyes  of 
Him  who  loved  them  so  well. 

After  all,  as  you  are  a  gentleman  or  a  lady,  you 
will  probab]y  select  gentlemen  for  your  bodily  and 
spiritual  advisers,  and  then  all  will  be  right. 

This  repetition  of  the  above  words,  —  gentleman 
and  lady,  —  which  could  not  be  conveniently  avoided, 
reminds  me  what  strange  uses  are  made  of  them  by 
those  who  ought  to  know  what  they  mean.  Thus,  at 
a  marriage  ceremony,  once,  of  two  very  excellent  per 
sons  who  had  been  at  service,  instead  of,  Do  you  take 
this  man,  etc.  ?  and,  Do  you  take  this  woman  ?  how 
do  you  think  the  officiating  clergyman  put  the  ques 
tions?  It  was,  Do  you,  Miss  So  and  So,  take  this 
GENTLEMAN?  and,  Do  you,  MB.  This  or  That,  take 


THE  PROFESSOB  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    145 

this  LADY  ? !  What  would  any  English  duchess,  ay, 
or  the  Queen  of  England  herself,  have  thought,  if 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  had  called  her  and  her 
bridegroom  anything  but  plain  woman  and  man  at 
such  a  time? 

I  don't  doubt  the  Poor  Relation  thought  it  was  all 
very  fine,  if  she  happened  to  be  in  the  church;  but 
if  the  worthy  man  who  uttered  these  monstrous  words 
—  monstrous  in  such  a  connection  —  had  known  the 
ludicrous  surprise,  the  convulsion  of  inward  disgust 
and  contempt,  that  seized  upon  many  of  the  persons 
who  were  present,  —  had  guessed  what  a  sudden  flash 
of  light  it  threw  on  the  Dutch  gilding,  the  pinchbeck, 
the  shabby,  perking  pretension  belonging  to  certain 
social  layers,  —  so  inherent  in  their  whole  mode  of 
being,  that  the  holiest  offices  of  religion  cannot  ex 
clude  its  impertinences,  —  the  good  man  would  have 
given  his  marriage-fee  twice  over  to  recall  that  su 
perb  and  full-blown  vulgarism.  Any  persons  whom 
it  could  please  could  have  no  better  notion  of  what 
the  words  referred  to  signify  than  of  the  meaning  of 
apsides  and  asymptotes. 

MAN!  Sir!  WOMAN!  Sir!  Gentility  is  a  fine 
thing,  not  to  be  undervalued,  as  I  have  been  trying  to 
explain ;  but  humanity  comes  before  that. 

"  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?  " 

The  beauty  of  that  plainness  of  speech  and  manners 
which  comes  from  the  finest  training  is  not  to  be  un 
derstood  by  those  whose  habitat  is  below  a  certain 
level.  Just  as  the  exquisite  sea-anemones  and  all  the 
graceful  ocean-flowers  die  out  at  some  fathoms  below 
the  surface,  the  elegances  and  suavities  of  life  die  out 


146   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

one  by  one  as  we  sink  through  the  social  scale.  For 
tunately,  the  virtues  are  more  tenacious  of  life,  and 
last  pretty  well  until  we  get  down  to  the  mud  of  ab 
solute  pauperism,  where  they  do  not  flourish  greatly. 

—  I  had  almost  forgotten  about  our  boarders.     As 
the  Model  of  all  the  Virtues  is  about  to  leave  us,  I 
find  myself  wondering  what  is  the  reason  we  are  not 
all    very  sorry.     Surely  we    all  like   good   persons. 
She  is  a  good  person.     Therefore  we  like  her.  —  Only 
we  don't. 

This  brief  syllogism,  and  its  briefer  negative,  in 
volving  the  principle  which  some  English  conveyancer 
borrowed  from  a  French  wit  and  embodied  in  the  lines 
by  which  Dr.  Fell  is  made  unamiably  immortal,  — 
this  syllogism,  I  say,  is  one  that  most  persons  have 
had  occasion  to  construct  and  demolish,  respecting 
somebody  or  other,  as  I  have  done  for  the  Model. 
"Pious  and  painefull."  Why  has  that  excellent  old 
phrase  gone  out  of  use?  Simply  because  these  good 
painefull  or  painstaking  persons  proved  to  be  such 
nuisances  in  the  long  run,  that  the  word  "painefull" 
came,  before  people  thought  of  it,  to  mean  paingw- 
ing  instead  of  painstaking. 

—  So,  the  old  fellah  's  off  to-morrah, — said  the 
young  man  John. 

Old  fellow  ?  —  said  I,  —  whom  do  you  mean  ? 

Why,  the  one  that  came  with  our  little  beauty,  — 
the  old  fellah  in  petticoats. 

—  Now  that  means  something,  —  said  I  to  myself. 
—  These  rough  young  rascals  very  often  hit  the  nail 

on  the  head,  if  they  do  strike  with  their  eyes  shut.  A 
real  woman  does  a  great  many  things  without  knowing 
why  she  does  them ;  but  these  pattern  machines  mix 
up  their  intellects  with  everything  they  do,  just  like 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    147 

men.  They  can't  help  it,  no  doubt;  but  we  can't 
help  getting  sick  of  them,  either.  Intellect  is  to  a 
woman's  nature  what  her  watch-spring  skirt  is  to  her 
dress ;  it  ought  to  underlie  her  silks  and  embroider 
ies,  but  not  to  show  itself  too  staringly  on  the  outside. 
-You  don't  know,  perhaps,  but  I  will  tell  you;  — 
the  brain  is  the  palest  of  all  the  internal  organs,  and 
the  heart  the  reddest.  Whatever  comes  from  the 
brain  carries  the  hue  of  the  place  it  came  from,  and 
whatever  comes  from  the  heart  carries  the  heat  and 
color  of  its  birthplace. 

The  young  man  John  did  not  hear  my  soliloquy,  of 
course,  but  sent  up  one  more  bubble  from  our  sinking 
conversation,  in  the  form  of  a  statement,  that  she  was 
at  liberty  to  go  to  a  personage  who  receives  no  visits, 
as  is  commonly  supposed,  from  virtuous  people. 

Why,  I  ask  again,  (of  my  reader,)  should  a  person 
who  never  did  anybody  any  wrong,  but,  on  the  con 
trary,  is  an  estimable  and  intelligent,  nay,  a  particu 
larly  enlightened  and  exemplary  member  of  society, 
fail  to  inspire  interest,  love,  and  devotion?  Because 
of  the  reversed  current  in  the  flow  of  thought  and  emo 
tion.  The  red  heart  sends  all  its  instincts  up  to  the 
white  brain  to  be  analyzed,  chilled,  blanched,  and  so 
become  pure  reason,  which  is  just  exactly  what  we  do 
not  want  of  woman  as  woman.  The  current  should 
run  the  other  way.  The  nice,  calm,  cold  thought, 
which  in  women  shapes  itself  so  rapidly  that  they 
hardly  know  it  as  thought,  should  always  travel  to  the 
lips  via  the  heart.  It  does  so  in  those  women  whom 
all  love  and  admire.  It  travels  the  wrong  way  in  the 
Model.  That  is  the  reason  why  the  Little  Gentleman 
said  "I  hate  her,  I  hate  her."  That  is  the  reason  why 
the  young  man  John  called  her  the  "old  fellah,"  and 


148    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

banished  her  to  the  company  of  the  great  Unpresent 
able.  That  is  the  reason  why  I,  the  Professor,  am 
picking  her  to  pieces  with  scalpel  and  forceps.  That 
is  the  reason  why  the  young  girl  whom  she  has  be 
friended  repays  her  kindness  with  gratitude  and  re 
spect,  rather  than  with  the  devotion  and  passionate 
fondness  which  lie  sleeping  beneath  the  calmness  of 
her  amber  eyes.  I  can  see  her,  as  she  sits  between 
this  estimable  and  most  correct  of  personages  and  the 
misshapen,  crotchety,  often  violent  and  explosive  lit 
tle  man  on  the  other  side  of  her,  leaning  and  sway 
ing  towards  him  as  she  speaks,  and  looking  into  his 
sad  eyes  as  if  she  found  some  fountain  in  them  at 
which  her  soul  could  quiet  its  thirst. 

Women  like  the  Model  are  a  natural  product  of  a 
chilly  climate  and  high  culture.     It  is  not 

"  The  frolic  wind  that  breathes  the  spring, 
Zephyr  with  Aurora  playing," 

when  the  two  meet 

"  on  beds  of  violets  blue, 

And  fresh-blown  roses  washed  in  dew," 

that  claim  such  women  as  their  offspring.  It  is  rather 
the  east  wind,  as  it  blows  out  of  the  fogs  of  Newfound 
land,  and  clasps  a  clear-eyed  wintry  noon  on  the  chill 
bridal  couch  of  a  New  England  ice-quarry.  —  Don't 
throw  up  your  cap  now,  and  hurrah  as  if  this  were 
giving  up  everything,  and  turning  against  the  best 
growth  of  our  latitudes,  —  the  daughters  of  the  soil. 
The  brain-women  never  interest  us  like  the  heart- 
women;  white  roses  please  less  than  red.  But  our 
Northern  seasons  have  a  narrow  green  streak  of 
spring,  as  well  as  a  broad  white  zone  of  winter,  — 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    149 

they  have  a  glowing  band  of  summer  and  a  golden 
stripe  of  autumn  in  their  many-colored  wardrobe ;  and 
women  are  born  to  us  that  wear  all  these  hues  of  earth 
and  heaven  in  their  souls.  Our  ice-eyed  brain-women 
are  really  admirable,  if  we  only  ask  of  them  just  what 
they  can  give,  and  no  more.  Only  compare  them, 
talking  or  writing,  with  one  of  those  babbling,  chat 
tering  dolls,  of  warmer  latitudes,  who  do  not  know 
enough  even  to  keep  out  of  print,  and  who  are  inter 
esting  to  us  only  as  specimens  of  arrest  of  develop 
ment  for  our  psychological  cabinets. 

Good-bye,  Model  of  all  the  Virtues!  We  can 
spare  you  now.  A  little  clear  perfection,  undiluted 
with  human  weakness,  goes  a  great  way.  Go!  be 
useful,  be  honorable  and  honored,  be  just,  be  charita 
ble,  talk  pure  reason,  and  help  to  disenchant  the  world 
by  the  light  of  an  achromatic  understanding.  Good 
bye!  Where  is  my  Beranger?  I  must  read  a  verse 
or  two  of  "Fretillon." 

Fair  play  for  all.  But  don't  claim  incompatible 
qualities  for  anybody.  Justice  is  a  very  rare  virtue 
in  our  community.  Everything  that  public  sentiment 
cares  about  is  put  into  a  Papin's  digester,  and  boiled 
under  high  pressure  till  all  is  turned  into  one  homo 
geneous  pulp,  and  the  very  bones  give  up  their  jelly. 
What  are  all  the  strongest  epithets  of  our  dictionary 
to  us  now  ?  The  critics  and  politicians,  and  especially 
the  philanthropists,  have  chewed  them,  till  they  are 
mere  wads  of  syllable -fibre,  without  a  suggestion  of 
their  old  pungency  and  power. 

Justice !  A  good  man  respects  the  rights  even  of 
brute  matter  and  arbitrary  symbols.  If  he  writes  the 
same  word  twice  in  succession,  by  accident,  he  always 
erases  the  one  that  stands  second;  has  not  the  first- 


150   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

comer  the  prior  right?  This  act  of  abstract  justice, 
which  I  trust  many  of  my  readers,  like  myself,  have 
often  performed,  is  a  curious  anti-illustration,  by  the 
way,  of  the  absolute  wickedness  of  human  disposi 
tions.  Why  does  n't  a  man  always  strike  out  the  first 
of  the  two  words,  to  gratify  his  diabolical  love  of  in 
justice  ? 

So,  I  say,  we  owe  a  genuine,  substantial  tribute  of 
respect  to  these  filtered  intellects  which  have  left  their 
womanhood  on  the  strainer.  They  are  so  clear  that  it 
is  a  pleasure  at  times  to  look  at  the  world  of  thought 
through  them.  But  the  rose  and  purple  tints  of  richer 
natures  they  cannot  give  us,  and  it  is  not  just  to  them 
to  ask  it. 

Fashionable  society  gets  at  these  rich  natures  very 
often  in  a  way  one  would  hardly  at  first  think  of.  It 
loves  vitality  above  all  things,  sometimes  disguised  by 
affected  languor,  always  well  kept  under  by  the  laws 
of  good-breeding,  —  but  still  it  loves  abundant  life, 
opulent  and  showy  organizations,  —  the  spherical 
rather  than  the  plane  trigonometry  of  female  architec 
ture,  —  plenty  of  red  blood,  flashing  eyes,  tropical 
voices,  and  forms  that  bear  the  splendors  of  dress 
without  growing  pale  beneath  their  lustre.  Among 
these  you  will  find  the  most  delicious  women  you  will 
ever  meet,  —  women  whom  dress  and  flattery  and  the 
round  of  city  gayeties  cannot  spoil,  —  talking  with 
whom,  you  forget  their  diamonds  and  laces,  —  and 
around  whom  all  the  nice  details  of  elegance,  which 
the  cold-blooded  beauty  next  them  is  scanning  so 
nicely,  blend  in  one  harmonious  whole,  too  perfect  to 
be  disturbed  by  the  petulant  sparkle  of  a  jewel,  or  the 
yellow  glare  of  a  bangle,  or- the  gay  toss  of  a  feather. 

There  are  many  things  that  I,  personally,  love  bet- 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    151 

ter  than  fashion  or  wealth.  Not  to  speak  of  those 
highest  objects  of  our  love  and  loyalty,  I  think  I  love 
ease  and  independence  better  than  the  golden  slavery 
of  perpetual  matinees  and  soirees,  or  the  pleasures  of 
accumulation. 

But  fashion  and  wealth  are  two  very  solemn  reali 
ties,  which  the  frivolous  class  of  moralists  have  talked 
a  great  deal  of  silly  stuff  about.  Fashion  is  only  the 
attempt  to  realize  Art  in  living  forms  and  social  in 
tercourse.  What  business  has  a  man  who  knows  no 
thing  about  the  beautiful,  and  cannot  pronounce  the 
word  view,  to  talk  about  fashion  to  a  set  of  people 
who,  if  one  of  the  quality  left  a  card  at  their  doors, 
would  contrive  to  keep  it  on  the  very  top  of  their  heap 
of  the  names  of  their  two-story  acquaintances,  till  it 
was  as  yellow  as  the  Codex  Vaticanus? 

Wealth,  too,  —  what  an  endless  repetition  of  the 
same  foolish  trivialities  about  it!  Take  the  single 
fact  of  its  alleged  uncertain  tenure  and  transitory 
character.  In  old  times,  when  men  were  all  the  time 
fighting  and  robbing  each  other,  —  in  those  tropical 
countries  where  the  Sabeans  and  the  Chaldeans  stole 
all  a  man's  cattle  and  camels,  and  there  were  fright 
ful  tornadoes  and  rains  of  fire  from  heaven,  it  was 
true  enough  that  riches  took  wings  to  themselves  not 
unfrequently  in  a  very  unexpected  way.  But,  with 
common  prudence  in  investments,  it  is  not  so  now. 
In  fact,  there  is  nothing  earthly  that  lasts  so  well,  on 
the  whole,  as  money.  A  man's  learning  dies  with 
him;  even  his  virtues  fade  out  of  remembrance,  but 
the  dividends  on  the  stocks  he  bequeaths  to  his  chil 
dren  live  and  keep  his  memory  green. 

I  do  not  think  there  is  much  courage  or  originality 
in  giving  utterance  to  truths  that  everybody  knows, 


152  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

but  which  get  overlaid  by  conventional  trumpery. 
The  only  distinction  which  it  is  necessary  to  point  out 
to  feeble-minded  folk  is  this:  that,  in  asserting  the 
breadth  and  depth  of  that  significance  which  gives  to 
fashion  and  fortune  their  tremendous  power,  we  do 
not  indorse  the  extravagances  which  often  disgrace  the 
one,  nor  the  meanness  which  often  degrades  the  other. 

A  remark  which  seems  to  contradict  a  universally 
current  opinion  is  not  generally  to  be  taken  "neat," 
but  watered  with  the  ideas  of  common-sense  and  com 
monplace  people.  So,  if  any  of  my  young  friends 
should  be  tempted  to  waste  their  substance  on  white 
kids  and  "all-rounds,"  or  to  insist  on  becoming  mil- 
lionnaires  at  once,  by  anything  I  have  said,  I  will  give 
them  references  to  some  of  the  class  referred  to,  well 
known  to  the  public  as  providers  of  literary  diluents, 
who  will  weaken  any  truth  so  that  there  is  not  an 
old  woman  in  the  land  who  cannot  take  it  with  perfect 
impunity. 

I  am  afraid  some  of  the  blessed  saints  in  diamonds 
will  think  I  mean  to  flatter  them.  I  hope  not ;  —  if  I 
do,  set  it  down  as  a  weakness.  But  there  is  so  much 
foolish  talk  about  wealth  and  fashion,  (which,  of 
course,  draw  a  good  many  heartless  and  essentially 
vulgar  people  into  the  glare  of  their  candelabra,  but 
which  have  a  real  respectability  and  meaning,  if  we 
will  only  look  at  them  stereoscopically,  with  both 
eyes  instead  of  one,)  that  I  thought  it  a  duty  to  speak 
a  few  words  for  them.  Why  can't  somebody  give  us 
a  list  of  things  that  everybody  thinks  and  nobody 
says,  and  another  list  of  things  that  everybody  says 
and  nobody  thinks  ? 

Lest  my  parish  should  suppose  we  have  forgotten 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    153 

graver  matters  in  these  lesser  topics,  I  beg  them  to 
drop  these  trifles  and  read  the  following  lesson  for  the 
day. 

THE  TWO  STREAMS. 

Behold  the  rocky  wall 
That  down  its  sloping  sides 

Pours  the  swift  rain-drops,  blending,  as  they  fall, 
In  rushing  river-tides  ! 

You  stream,  whose  sources  run 
Turned  by  a  pebble's  edge, 
Is  Athabasca,  rolling  toward  the  sun 
Through  the  cleft  mountain-ledge. 

The  slender  rill  had  strayed, 
But  for  the  slanting  stone, 
To  evening's  ocean,  with  the  tangled  braid 
Of  foam-flecked  Oregon. 

So  from  the  heights  of  Will 
Life's  parting  stream  descends, 
And,  as  a  moment  turns  its  slender  rill, 
Each  widening  torrent  bends,  — 

From  the  same  cradle's  side, 
From  the  same  mother's  knee,  — 
One  to  long  darkness  and  the  frozen  tide, 
One  to  the  Peaceful  Sea  ! 


VII. 

Our  landlady's  daughter  is  a  young  lady  of  some 
pretensions  to  gentility.  She  wears  her  bonnet  well 
back  on  her  head,  which  is  known  by  all  to  be  a  mark 
of  high  breeding.  She  wears  her  trains  very  long,  as 
the  great  ladies  do  in  Europe.  To  be  sure,  their 
dresses  are  so  made  only  to  sweep  the  tapestried  floors 


154    THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of  chateaux  and  palaces ;  as  those  odious  aristocrats 
of  the  other  side  do  not  go  draggling  through  the  mud 
in  silks  and  satins,  but,  forsooth,  must  ride  in  coaches 
when  they  are  in  full  dress.  It  is  true,  that,  consid 
ering  various  habits  of  the  American  people,  also  the 
little  accidents  which  the  best-kept  sidewalks  are  lia 
ble  to,  a  lady  who  has  swept  a  mile  of  them  is  not  ex 
actly  in  such  a  condition  that  one  would  care  to  be  her 
neighbor.  But  then  there  is  no  need  of  being  so  hard 
on  these  slight  weaknesses  of  the  poor,  dear  women 
as  our  little  deformed  gentleman  was  the  other  day. 

—  There  are  no  such  women  as  the  Boston  women, 
Sir,  —  he  said.  Forty -two  degrees,  north  latitude, 
Rome,  Sir,  Boston,  Sir !  They  had  grand  women  in 
old  Rome,  Sir,  —  and  the  women  bore  such  men  — 
children  as  never  the  world  saw  before.  And  so  it  was 
here,  Sir.  I  tell  you,  the  revolution  the  Boston  boys 
started  had  to  run  in  woman's  milk  before  it  ran  in 
man's  blood,  Sir  ! 

But  confound  the  make-believe  women  we  have 
turned  loose  in  our  streets  !  —  where  do  they  come 
from?  Not  out  of  Boston  parlors,  I  trust.  Why, 
there  is  n't  a  beast  or  a  bird  that  would  drag  its  tail 
through  the  dirt  in  the  way  these  creatures  do  their 
dresses.  Because  a  queen  or  a  duchess  wears  long 
robes  on  great  occasions,  a  maid-of -all-work  or  a  fac 
tory-girl  thinks  she  must  make  herself  a  nuisance  by 
trailing  through  the  street,  picking  up  and  carrying 

about  with  her  pah ! that 's  what  I  call  getting 

vulgarity  into  your  bones  and  marrow.  Making  be 
lieve  be  what  you  are  not  is  the  essence  of  vulgarity. 
Show  over  dirt  is  the  one  attribute  of  vulgar  people. 
If  any  man  can  walk  behind  one  of  these  women  and 
see  what  she  rakes  up  as  she  goes,  and  not  feel  squeam- 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    155 

ish,  he  has  got  a  tough  stomach.  I  would  n't  let  one 
of  'em  into  my  room  without  serving  'em  as  David 
served  Saul  at  the  cave  in  the  wilderness,  —  cut  off 
his  skirts,  Sir  !  cut  off  his  skirts  ! 

I  suggested,  that  I  had  seen  some  pretty  stylish 
ladies  who  offended  in  the  way  he  condemned. 

Stylish  women,  I  don't  doubt,  —  said  the  Little 
Gentleman.  —  Don't  tell  me  that  a  true  lady  ever  sac 
rifices  the  duty  of  keeping  all  about  her  sweet  and 
clean  to  the  wish  of  making  a  vulgar  show.  I  won't 
believe  it  of  a  lady.  There  are  some  things  that  no 
fashion  has  any  right  to  touch,  and  cleanliness  is  one 
of  those  things.  If  a  woman  wishes  to  show  that  her 
husband  or  her  father  has  got  money,  which  she  wants 
and  means  to  spend,  but  does  n't  know  how,  let  her 
buy  a  yard  or  two  of  silk  and  pin  it  to  her  dress  when 
she  goes  out  to  walk,  but  let  her  unpin  it  before  she 
goes  into  the  house ;  —  there  may  be  poor  women  that 
will  think  it  worth  disinfecting.  It  is  an  insult  to  a 
respectable  laundress  to  carry  such  things  into  a 
house  for  her  to  deal  with.  I  don't  like  the  Bloomers 
any  too  well,  —  in  fact,  I  never  saw  but  one,  and  she 
—  or  he,  or  it  —  had  a  mob  of  boys  after  her,  or  what 
ever  you  call  the  creature,  as  if  she  had  been  a 

The  Little  Gentleman  stopped  short,  —  flushed 
somewhat,  and  looked  round  with  that  involuntary, 
suspicious  glance  which  the  subjects  of  any  bodily 
misfortune  are  very  apt  to  cast  round  them.  His 
eye  wandered  over  the  company,  none  of  whom,  ex 
cepting  myself  and  one  other,  had,  probably,  noticed 
the  movement.  They  fell  at  last  on  Iris,  —  his  next 
neighbor,  you  remember. 

—  We  know  in  a  moment,  on  looking  suddenly  at 
a  person,  if  that  person's  eyes  have  been  fixed  on  us. 


156    THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Sometimes  we  are  conscious  of  it  before  we  turn  so 
as  to  see  the  person.  Strange  secrets  of  curiosity,  of 
impertinence,  of  malice,  of  love,  leak  out  in  this  way. 
There  is  no  need  of  Mrs.  Felix  Lorraine's  reflection 
in  the  mirror,  to  tell  us  that  she  is  plotting  evil  for  us 
behind  our  backs..  We  know  it,  as  we  know  by  the 
ominous  stillness  of  a  child  that  some  mischief  or  other 
is  going  on.  A  young  girl  betrays,  in  a  moment, 
that  her  eyes  have  been  feeding  on  the  face  where  you 
find  them  fixed,  and  not  merely  brushing  over  it  with 
their  pencils  of  blue  or  brown  light. 

A  certain  involuntary  adjustment  assimilates  us, 
you  may  also  observe,  to  that  upon  which  we  look. 
Roses  redden  the  cheeks  of  her  who  stoops  to  gather 
them,  and  buttercups  turn  little  people's  chins  yellow. 
When  we  look  at  a  vast  landscape,  our  chests  expand 
as  if  we  would  enlarge  to  fill  it.  When  we  examine 
a  minute  object,  we  naturally  contract,  not  only  our 
foreheads,  but  all  our  dimensions.  If  I  see  two  men 
wrestling,  I  wrestle  too,  with  my  limbs  and  features. 
When  a  country-fellow  comes  upon  the  stage,  you 
will  see  twenty  faces  in  the  boxes  putting  on  the 
bumpkin  expression.  There  is  no  need  of  multiply 
ing  instances  to  reach  this  generalization;  every  per 
son  and  thing  we  look  upon  puts  its  special  mark 
upon  us.  If  this  is  repeated  often  enough,  we  get  a 
permanent  resemblance  to  it,  or,  at  least,  a  fixed  as 
pect  which  we  took  from  it.  Husband  and  wife  come 
to  look  alike  at  last,  as  has  often  been  noticed.  It  is 
a  common  saying  of  a  jockey,  that  he  is  "all  horse"; 
and  I  have  often  fancied  that  milkmen  get  a  stiff,  up 
right  carriage,  and  an  angular  movement  of  the  arm, 
that  remind  one  of  a  pump  and  the  working  of  its 
handle. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    157 

All  this  came  in  by  accident,  just  because  I  hap 
pened  to  mention  that  the  Little  Gentleman  found 
that  Iris  had  been  looking  at  him  with  her  soul  in  her 
eyes,  when  his  glance  rested  on  her  after  wandering 
round  the  company.  What  he  thought,  it  is  hard  to 
say ;  but  the  shadow  of  suspicion  faded  off  from  his 
face,  and  he  looked  calmly  into  the  amber  eyes,  rest 
ing  his  cheek  upon  the  hand  that  wore  the  red  jewel. 

—  If  it  were  a  possible  thing,  —  women  are  such 
strange  creatures  !     Is  there  any  trick  that  love  and 
their  own  fancies  do  not  play  them?     Just  see  how 
they  marry !     A  woman  that  gets  hold  of   a  bit  of 
manhood  is  like  one  of  those  Chinese  wood-carvers  who 
work  on  any  odd,  fantastic  root  that  comes  to  hand, 
and,  if  it  is  only  bulbous  above  and  bifurcated  below, 
will  always  contrive  to  make  a  man  —  such  as  he  is 
—  out  of  it.     I  should  like  to  see  any  kind  of  a  man, 
distinguishable  from  a  Gorilla,  that  some  good  and 
even  pretty  woman  could  not  shape  a  husband  out  of. 

—  A  child,  — yes,  if  you  choose  to  call  her  so,  — 
but  such  a  child  !     Do  you  know  how  Art  brings  all 
ages  together?     There  is  no  age  to  the  angels  and 
ideal  human  forms  among  which  the  artist  lives,  and 
he  shares  their  youth  until  his  hand  trembles  and  his 
eye  grows  dim.     The  youthful  paintef  talks  of  white- 
bearded  Leonardo  as  if  he  were  a  brother,  and  the 
veteran  forgets  that  Raphael  died  at  an  age  to  which 
his  own  is  of  patriarchal  antiquity. 

But  why  this  lover  of  the  beautiful  should  be  so 
drawn  to  one  whom  Nature  has  wronged  so  deeply 
seems  hard  to  explain.  Pity,  I  suppose.  They  say 
that  leads  to  love. 

—  I  thought  this  matter  over  until  I  became  excited 
and  curious,  and  determined  to  set  myself  more  seri- 


158  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ously  at  work  to  find  out  what  was  going  on  in  these 
wild  hearts  and  where  their  passionate  lives  were  drift 
ing.  I  say  wild  hearts  and  passionate  lives,  because 
I  think  I  can  look  through  this  seeming  calmness  of 
youth  and  this  apparent  feebleness  of  organization, 
and  see  that  Nature,  whom  it  is  very  hard  to  cheat, 
is  only  waiting  as  the  sapper  waits  in  his  mine, 
knowing  that  all  is  in  readiness  and  the  slow-match 
burning  quietly  down  to  the  powder.  He  will  leave 
it  by-and-by,  and  then  it  will  take  care  of  itself. 

One  need  not  wait  to  see  the  smoke  coming  through 
the  roof  of  a  house  and  the  flames  breaking  out  of  the 
windows  to  know  that  the  building  is  on  fire.  Hark  ! 
There  is  a  quiet,  steady,  unobtrusive,  crisp,  not  loud, 
but  very  knowing  little  creeping  crackle  that  is  toler 
ably  intelligible.  There  is  a  whiff  of  something  float 
ing  about,  suggestive  of  toasting  shingles.  Also  a 
sharp  pyroligneous-acid  pungency  in  the  air  that  stings 
one's  eyes.  Let  us  get  up  and  see  what  is  going  on. 
—  Oh,  —  oh,  —  oh  !  do  you  know  what  has  got  hold 
of  you  ?  It  is  the  great  red  dragon  that  is  born  of  the 
little  red  eggs  we  call  sparks,  with  his  hundred  blow 
ing  red  manes,  and  his  thousand  lashing  red  tails,  and 
his  multitudinous  red  eyes  glaring  at  every  crack  and 
key -hole,  and  ^lis  countless  red  tongues  lapping  the 
beams  he  is  going  to  crunch  presently,  and  his  hot 
breath  warping  the  panels  and  cracking  the  glass  and 
making  old  timber  sweat  that  had  forgotten  it  was 
ever  alive  with  sap.  Run  for  your  life  !  leap  !  or 
you  will  be  a  cinder  in  five  minutes,  that  nothing  but 
a  coroner  would  take  for  the  wreck  of  a  human  being  ! 

If  any  gentleman  will  have  the  kindness  to  stop  this 
run-away  comparison,  I  shall  be  much  obliged  to  him. 
All  I  intended  to  say  was,  that  we  need  not  wait  for 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    159 

hearts  to  break  out  in  flames  to  know  that  they  are  full 
of  combustibles  and  that  a  spark  has  got  among  them. 
I  don't  pretend  to  say  or  know  what  it  is  that  brings 
these  two  persons  together;  —  and  when  I  say  to 
gether,  I  only  mean  that  there  is  an  evident  affinity 
of  some  kind  or  other  which  makes  their  commonest 
intercourse  strangely  significant,  as  that  each  seems  to 
understand  a  look  or  a  word  of  the  other.  When  the 
young  girl  laid  her  hand  on  the  Little  Gentleman's 
arm,  —  which  so  greatly  shocked  the  Model,  you  may 
remember,  —  I  saw  that  she  had  learned  the  lion- 
tamer's  secret.  She  masters  him,  and  yet  I  can  see 
she  has  a  kind  of  awe  of  him,  as  the  man  who  goes 
into  the  cage  has  of  the  monster  that  he  makes  a 
baby  of. 

One  of  two  things  must  happen.  The  first  is  love, 
downright  love,  on  the  part  of  this  young  girl,  for  the 
poor  little  misshapen  man.  You  may  laugh,  if  you 
like.  But  women  are  apt  to  love  the  men  who  they 
think  have  the  largest  capacity  of  loving ;  —  and  who 
can  love  like  one  that  has  thirsted  all  his  life  long  for 
the  smile  of  youth  and  beauty,  and  seen  it  fly  his 
presence  as  the  wave  ebbed  from  the  parched  lips  of 
him  whose  fabled  punishment  is  the  perpetual  type  of 
human  longing  and  disappointment?  What  would 
become  of  Am,  if  this  fresh  soul  should  stoop  upon 
him  in  her  first  young  passion,  as  the  flamingo  drops 
out  of  the  sky  upon  some  lonely  and  dark  lagoon  in 
the  marshes  of  Cagliari,  with  a  flutter  of  scarlet  feath 
ers  and  a  kindling  of  strange  fires  in  the  shadowy 
waters  that  hold  her  burning  image? 

—  Marry  her,  of  course?  —  Why,  no,  not  of 
course.  I  should  think  the  chance  less,  on  the  whole, 
that  he  would  be  willing  to  marry  her  than  she  to 
marry  him. 


160   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

There  is  one  other  thing  that  might  happen.  If 
the  interest  he  awakes  in  her  gets  to  be  a  deep  one, 
and  yet  has  nothing  of  love  in  it,  she  will  glance  off 
from  him  into  some  great  passion  or  other.  All  ex 
citements  run  to  love  in  women  of  a  certain  —  let  us 
not  say  age,  but  youth.  An  electrical  current  passing 
through  a  coil  of  wire  makes  a  magnet  of  a  bar  of 
iron  lying  within  it,  but  not  touching  it.  So  a 
woman  is  turned  into  a  love-magnet  by  a  tingling  cur 
rent  of  life  running  round  her.  I  should  like  to  see 
one  of  them  balanced  on  a  pivot  properly  adjusted, 
and  watch  if  she  did  not  turn  so  as  to  point  north  and 
south,  —  as  she  would,  if  the  love-currents  are  like 
those  of  the  earth  our  mother. 

Pray,  do  you  happen  to  remember  Wordsworth's 
"Boy  of  Windermere"?  This  boy  used  to  put  his 
hands  to  his  mouth,  and  shout  aloud,  mimicking  the 
hooting  of  the  owls,  who  would  answer  him 

"  with  quivering  peals, 

And  long  halloos  and  screams,  and  echoes  loud 
Redoubled  and  redoubled." 

When  they  failed  to  answer  him,  and  he  hung  lis 
tening  intently  for  their  voices,  he  would  sometimes 
catch  the  faint  sound  of  far  distant  waterfalls,  or 
the  whole  scene  around  him  would  imprint  itself  with 
new  force  upon  his  perceptions.  —  Read  the  sonnet,  if 
you  please ;  —  it  is  Wordsworth  all  over,  —  trivial  in 
subject,  solemn  in  style,  vivid  in  description,  prolix 
in  detail,  true  metaphysically,  but  immensely  sugges 
tive  of  "imagination,"  to  use  a  mild  term,  when  re 
lated  as  an  actual  fact  of  a  sprightly  youngster. 

All  I  want  of  it  is  to  enforce  the  principle,  that, 
when  the  door  of  the  soul  is  once  opened  to  a  guest1, 
there  is  no  knowing  who  will  come  in  next. 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    161 

—  Our  young  girl  keeps  up  her  early  habit  of 
sketching  heads  and  characters.  Nobody  is,  I  should 
think,  more  faithful  and  exact  in  the  drawing  of  the 
academical  figures  given  her  as  lessons,  but  there  is  a 
perpetual  arabesque  of  fancies  that  runs  round  the 
margin  of  her  drawings,  and  there  is  one  book  which 
I  know  she  keeps  to  run  riot  in,  where,  if  anywhere, 
a  shrewd  eye  would  be  most  likely  to  read  her 
thoughts.  This  book  of  hers  I  mean  to  see,  if  I  can 
get  at  it  honorably. 

I  have  never  yet  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  Little 
Gentleman's  chamber.  How  he  lives,  when  he  once 
gets  within  it,  I  can  only  guess.  His  hours  are  late, 
as  I  have  said ;  often,  on  waking  late  in  the  night,  I 
see  the  light  through  cracks  in  his  window-shutters  on 
the  wall  of  the  house  opposite.  If  the  times  of  witch 
craft  were  not  over,  I  should  be  afraid  to  be  so  close 
a  neighbor  to  a  place  from  which  there  come  such 
strange  noises.  Sometimes  it  is  the  dragging  of  some 
thing  heavy  over  the  floor,  that  makes  me  shiver  to 
hear  it,  —  it  sounds  so  like  what  people  that  kill  other 
people  have  to  do  now  and  then.  Occasionally  I  hear 
very  sweet  strains  of  music,  —  whether  of  a  wind  or 
stringed  instrument,  or  a  human  voice,  strange  as  it 
may  seem,  I  have  often  tried  to  find  out,  but  through 
the  partition  I  could  not  be  quite  sure.  If  I  have  not 
heard  a  woman  cry  and  moan,  and  then  again  laugh 
as  though  she  would  die  laughing,  I  have  heard  sounds 
so  like  them  that  —  I  am  a  fool  to  confess  it  —  I  have 
covered  my  head  with  the  bedclothes ;  for  I  have  had 
a  fancy  in  my  dreams,  that  I  could  hardly  shake  off 
when  I  woke  up,  about  that  so-called  witch  that  was 
his  great-grandmother,  or  whatever  it  was,  —  a  sort 
of  fancy  that  she  visited  the  Little  Gentleman,  —  a 


162   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

young  woman  in  old-fashioned  dress,  with  a  red  ring 
round  her  white  neck,  —  not  a  neck-lace,  but  a  dull 
stain. 

Of  course  you  don't  suppose  that  1  have  any  foolish 
superstitions  about  the  matter,  —  I,  the  Professor, 
who  have  seen  enough  to  take  all  that  nonsense  out  of 
any  man's  head  !  It  is  not  our  beliefs  that  frighten 
us  half  so  much  as  our  fancies.  A  man  not  only  be 
lieves,  but  knows  he  runs  a  risk,  whenever  he  steps 
into  a  railroad  car;  but  it  doesn't  worry  him  much. 
On  the  other  hand,  carry  that  man  across  a  pasture  a 
little  way  from  some  dreary  country -village,  and  show 
him  an  old  house  where  there  were  strange  deaths  a 
good  many  years  ago,  and  there  are  rumors  of  ugly 
spots  on  the  walls,  —  the  old  man  hung  himself  in  the 
garret,  that  is  certain,  and  ever  since  the  country -peo 
ple  have  called  it  "the  haunted  house,"  —  the  owners 
have  n't  been  able  to  let  it  since  the  last  tenants  left 
on  account  of  the  noises,  —  so  it  has  fallen  into  sad 
decay,  and  the  moss  grows  on  the  rotten  shingles  of 
the  roof,  and  the  clapboards  have  turned  black,  and 
the  windows  rattle  like  teeth  that  chatter  with  fear, 
and  the  walls  of  the  house  begin  to  lean  as  if  its  knees 
were  shaking, — take  the  man  who  didn't  mind  the 
real  risk  of  the  cars  to  that  old  house,  on  some  dreary 
November  evening,  and  ask  him  to  sleep  there  alone, 
—  how  do  you  think  he  will  like  it?  He  does  n't  be 
lieve  one  word  of  ghosts,  —  but  then  he  knows,  that, 
whether  waking  or  sleeping,  his  imagination  will  peo 
ple  the  haunted  chambers  with  ghostly  images.  It  is 
not  what  we  believe,  as  I  said  before,  that  frightens 
us  commonly,  but  what  we  conceive.  A  principle  that 
reaches  a  good  way  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  I  say, 
then,  that,  if  these  odd  sounds  coming  from  the  Little 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    163 

Gentleman's  chamber  sometimes  make  me  nervous,  so 
that  I  cannot  get  to  sleep,  it  is  not  because  I  suppose 
he  is  engaged  in  any  unlawful  or  mysterious  way. 
The  only  wicked  suggestion  that  ever  came  into  my 
head  was  one  that  was  founded  on  the  landlady's  story 
of  his  having  a  pile  of  gold ;  it  was  a  ridiculous  fancy ; 
besides,  I  suspect  the  story  of  sweating  gold  was  only 
one  of  the  many  fables  got  up  to  make  the  Jews  odious 
and  afford  a  pretext  for  plundering  them.  As  for  the 
sound  like  a  woman  laughing  and  crying,  I  never  said 
it  was  a  woman's  voice;  for,  in  the  first  place,  I  could 
only  hear  indistinctly ;  and,  secondly,  he  may  have  an 
organ,  or  some  queer  instrument  or  other,  with  what 
they  call  the  vox  humana  stop.  If  he  moves  his  bed 
round  to  get  away  from  the  window,  or  for  any  such 
reason,  there  is  nothing  very  frightful  in  that  simple 
operation.  Most  of  our  foolish  conceits  explain  them 
selves  in  some  such  simple  way.  And  yet,  for  all 
that,  I  confess,  that,  when  I  woke  up  the  other  even 
ing,  and  heard,  first  a  sweet  complaining  cry,  and 
then  footsteps,  and  then  the  dragging  sound,  —  no 
thing  but  his  bed,  I  am  quite  sure,  —  I  felt  a  stirring 
in  the  roots  of  my  hair  as  the  feasters  did  in  Keats 's 
terrible  poem  of  "Lamia." 

There  is  nothing  very  odd  in  my  feeling  nervous 
when  I  happen  to  lie  awake  and  get  listening  for 
sounds.  Just  keep  your  ears  open  any  time  after 
midnight,  when  you  are  lying  in  bed  in  a  lone  attic 
of  a  dark  night.  What  horrid,  strange,  suggestive, 
unaccountable  noises  you  will  hear  !  The  stillness  of 
night  is  a  vulgar  error.  All  the  dead  things  seem  to 
be  alive.  Crack  !  That  is  the  old  chest  of  drawers ; 
you  never  hear  it  crack  in  the  daytime.  Creak ! 
There  's  a  door  ajar;  you  know  you  shut  them  all. 


164   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Where  can  that  latch  be  that  rattles  so?     Is  anybody 

trying  it  softly?  or,  worse  than  any  body,  is ? 

(Cold  shiver.)  Then  a  sudden  gust  that  jars  all  the 
windows ;  —  very  strange  !  —  there  does  not  seem  to 
be  any  wind  about  that  it  belongs  to.  When  it  stops, 
you  hear  the  worms  boring  in  the  powdery  beams 
overhead.  Then  steps  outside,  —  a  stray  animal,  no 
doubt.  All  right,  —  but  a  gentle  moisture  breaks  out 
all  over  you ;  and  then  something  like  a  whistle  or  a 
cry,  —  another  gust  of  wind,  perhaps ;  that  accounts 
for  the  rustling  that  just  made  your  heart  roll  over 
and  tumble  about,  so  that  it  felt  more  like  a  live  rat 
under  your  ribs  than  a  part  of  your  own  body ;  then 
a  crash  of  something  that  has  fallen,  —  blown  over, 

very  likely Pater  noster,  qui  es  in  codis  !  for 

you  are  damp  and  cold,  and  sitting  bolt  upright,  and 
the  bed  trembling  so  that  the  death-watch  is  fright 
ened  and  has  stopped  ticking  ! 

No,  —  night  is  an  awful  time  for  strange  noises  and 
secret  doings.  Who  ever  dreamed,  till  one  of  our 
sleepless  neighbors  told  us  of  it,  of  that  Walpurgis 
gathering  of  birds  and  beasts  of  prey,  —  foxes,  and 
owls,  and  crows,  and  eagles,  that  come  from  all  the 
country  round  on  moonshiny  nights  to  crunch  the 
clams  and  muscles,  and  pick  out  the  eyes  of  dead 
fishes  that  the  storm  has  thrown  on  Chelsea  Beach? 
Our  old  mother  Nature  has  pleasant  and  cheery  tones 
enough  for  us  when  she  comes  in  her  dress  of  blue  and 
gold  over  the  eastern  hill -tops ;  but  when  she  follows 
us  up-stairs  to  our  beds  in  her  suit  of  black  velvet  and 
diamonds,  every  creak  of  her  sandals  and  every  whis 
per  of  her  lips  is  full  of  mystery  and  fear. 

You  understand,  then,  distinctly,  that  I  do  not  be 
lieve  there  is  anything  about  this  singular  little  neigh- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    165 

bor  of  mine  which  is  as  it  should  not  be.  Probably 
a  visit  to  his  room  would  clear  up  all  that  has  puzzled 
me,  and  make  me  laugh  at  the  notions  which  began, 
I  suppose,  in  nightmares,  and  ended  by  keeping  my 
imagination  at  work  so  as  almost  to  make  me  uncom 
fortable  at  times.  But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  visit  him 
as  some  of  our  other  boarders,  for  various  reasons 
which  I  will  not  stop  to  mention.  I  think  some  of 
them  are  rather  pleased  to  get  "the  Professor"  under 
their  ceilings. 

The  young  man  John,  for  instance,  asked  me  to 
come  up  one  day  and  try  some  "old  Burbon,"  which 
he  said  was  A  1.  On  asking  him  what  was  the  num~ 
ber  of  his  room,  he  answered,  that  it  was  forty-'leven, 
sky-parlor  floor,  but  that  I  should  n't  find  it,  if  he 
did  n't  go  ahead  to  show  me  the  way.  I  followed  him 
to  his  habitat,  being  very  willing  to  see  in  what  kind 
of  warren  he  burrowed,  and  thinking  I  might  pick  up 
something  about  the  boarders  who  had  excited  my 
curiosity. 

Mighty  close  quarters  they  were  where  the  young 
man  John  bestowed  himself  and  his  furniture;  this 
last  consisting  of  a  bed,  a  chair,  a  bureau,  a  trunk,  and 
numerous  pegs  with  coats  and  "pants"  and  "vests," 
—  as  he  was  in  the  habit  of  calling  waist-coats  and 
pantaloons  or  trousers,  —  hanging  up  as  if  the  owner 
had  melted  out  of  them.  Several  prints  were  pinned 
up  unframed,  —  among  them  that  grand  national  por 
trait-piece,  "Barnum  presenting  Ossian  E.  Dodge  to 
Jenny  Lind,"  and  a  picture  of  a  famous  trot,  in  which 
I  admired  anew  the  cabalistic  air  of  that  imposing 
array  of  expressions,  and  especially  the  Italicized 
word,  "Dan  Mace  names  b.  h.  Major  Slocum,"  and 
"  Hiram  Woodruff  names  g.  m.  Lady  Smith." 
"  Best  three  in  five.  Time:  2.40,  2.46,  2.50." 


166    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

That  set  me  thinking  how  very  odd  this  matter  of 
trotting  horses  is,  as  an  index  of  the  mathematical 
exactness  of  the  laws  of  living  mechanism.  I  saw 
Lady  Suffolk  trot  a  mile  in  2.26.  Flora  Temple  has 
trotted  close  down  to  2.20;  and  Ethan  Allen  in  2.25, 
or  less.  Many  horses  have  trotted  their  mile  under 
2.30;  none  that  I  remember  in  public  as  low  down  as 
2.20.1  From  five  to  ten  seconds,  then,  in  about  a  hun 
dred  and  sixty  is  the  whole  range  of  the  maxima  of 
the  present  race  of  trotting  horses.  The  same  thing- 
is  seen  in  the  running  of  men.  Many  can  run  a  mile 
in  five  minutes ;  but  when  one  comes  to  the  fractions 
below,  they  taper  down  until  somewhere  about  4. 30  the 
maximum  is  reached.  Averages  of  masses  have  been 
studied  more  than  averages  of  maxima  and  minima. 
We  know  from  the  Registrar-General's  Reports,  that 
a  certain  number  of  children  —  say^from  one  to  two 
dozen  —  die  every  year  in  England  from  drinking  hot 
water  out  of  spouts  of  teakettles.  We  know,  that, 
among  suicides,  women  and  men  past  a  certain  age 
almost  never  use  fire-arms.  A  woman  who  has  made 
up  her  mind  to  die  is  still  afraid  of  a  pistol  or  a  gun. 
Or  is  it  that  the  explosion  would  derange  her  costume  ? 

1 1  will  let  these  numbers  stand  as  printed  thirty  years  ago. 
Mr.  Henry  Sturgis  Russell,  than  whom  there  is  no  better  author 
ity,  has  furnished  me  the  following  list :  — 

"  Lady  Suffolk 2.26£ 

Flora  Temple 2.19f 

Dexter 2.17| 

Goldsmith  Maid 2.14 

Maud  S 2.08£ 

are  the  official  records  and  show  as  clearly  as  any  the  progress 
made." 

There  are  those  who  believe  that  the  record  will  come  down 
to  two  minutes. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    167 

I  say,  averages  of  masses  we  have,  but  our  tables 
of  maxima  we  owe  to  the  sporting  men  more  than  to 
the  philosophers.  The  lesson  their  experience  teaches 
is,  that  Nature  makes  no  leaps,  —  does  nothing  per 
saltum.  The  greatest  brain  that  ever  lived,  no  doubt, 
was  only  a  small  fraction  of  an  idea  ahead  of  the  sec 
ond  best.  Just  look  at  the  chess-players.  Leaving 
out  the  phenomenal  exceptions,  the  nice  shades  that 
separate  the  skilful  ones  show  how  closely  their  brains 
approximate,  —  almost  as  closely  as  chronometers. 
Such  a  person  is  a  "^m^Atf-player," —  he  must  have 
that  piece  given  him.  Another  must  have  two  pawns. 
Another,  "pawn  and  two,"  or  one  pawn  and  two 
moves.  Then  we  find  one  who  claims  "pawn  and 
move,"  holding  himself,  with  this  fractional  advantage, 
a  match  for  one  who  would  be  pretty  sure  to  beat  him 
playing  even. — So  much  are  minds  alike;  and  you 
and  I  think  we  are  "peculiar,"  —  that  Nature  broke 
her  -jelly-mould  after  shaping  our  cerebral  convolu 
tions.  So  I  reflected,  standing  and  looking  at  the 
picture. 

—  I  say,  Governor,  —  broke  in  the  young  man 
John,  —  them  hosses  '11  stay  jest  as  well,  if  you  '11  only 
set  down.  I  've  had  'em  this  year,  and  they  have  n't 
stirred.  —  He  spoke,  and  handed  the  chair  towards 
me,  —  seating  himself,  at  the  same  time,  on  the  end 
of  the  bed. 

Yau  have  lived  in  this  house  some  time?  —  I  said, 
—  with  a  note  of  interrogation  at  the  end  of  the  state 
ment. 

Do  I  look  as  if  I  'd  lost  much  flesh  —  said  he,  — 
answering  my  question  by  another. 

No,  —  said  I ;  —  for  that  matter,  I  think  you  do 
credit  to  "the  bountifully  furnished  table  of  the  excel- 


168  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

lent  lady  who  provides  so  liberally  for  the  company 
that  meets  around  her  hospitable  board." 

[The  sentence  in  quotation-marks  was  from  one  of 
those  disinterested  editorials  in  small  type,  which  I 
suspect  to  have  been  furnished  by  a  friend  of  the 
landlady's,  and  paid  for  as  an  advertisement.  This 
impartial  testimony  to  the  superior  qualities  of  the 
establishment  and  its  head  attracted  a  number  of  ap 
plicants  for  admission,  and  a  couple  of  new  boarders 
made  a  brief  appearance  at  the  table.  One  of  them 
was  of  the  class  of  people  who  grumble  if  they  don't 
get  canvas-backs  and  woodcocks  every  day,  for  three- 
fifty  per  week.  The  other  was  subject  to  somnambu 
lism,  or  walking  in  the  night,  when  he  ought  to  have 
been  asleep  in  his  bed.  In  this  state  he  walked  into 
several  of  the  boarders'  .chambers,  his  eyes  wide  open, 
as  is  usual  with  somnambulists,  and,  from  some  odd 
instinct  or  other,  wishing  to  know  what  the  hour  was, 
got  together  a  number  of  their  watches,  for  the  pur 
pose  of  comparing  them,  as  it  would  seem.  Among 
them  was  a  repeater,  belonging  to  our  young  Mary- 
lander.  He  happened  to  wake  up  while  the  somnam 
bulist  was  in  his  chamber,  and,  not  knowing  his  in 
firmity,  caught  hold  of  him  and  gave  him  a  dreadful 
shaking,  after  which  he  tied  his  hands  and  feet,  and 
so  left  him  till  morning,  when  he  introduced  him  to 
a  gentleman  used  to  taking  care  of  such  cases  of  som 
nambulism.] 

If  you,  my  reader,  will  please  to  skip  backward, 
over  this  parenthesis,  you  will  come  to  our  conversa 
tion,  which  it  has  interrupted. 

It  a'n't  the  feed,  —  said  the  young  man  John,  — 
it 's  the  old  woman's  looks  when  a  fellah  lays  it  in  too 
strong.  The  feed  's  well  enough.  After  geese  have 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.     169 

got  tough,  'n'  turkeys  have  got  strong,  'n'  lamb  's  got 
old,  'n'  veal 's  pretty  nigh  beef,  'n'  sparragrass  's  grow- 
in'  tall  'n'  slim  'n'  scattery  about  the  head,  'n'  green 
peas  are  gettin'  so  big  'n'  hard  they  'd  be  dangerous  if 
you  fired  'em  out  of  a  revolver,  we  get  hold  of  all 
them  delicacies  of  the  season.  But  it 's  too  much  like 
feedin'  on  live  folks  and  devourin'  widdah's  sub 
stance,  to  lay  yourself  out  in  the  eatin'  way,  when  a 
fellah  's  as  hungry  as  the  chap  that  said  a  turkey  was 
too  much  for  one  'n'  not  enough  for  two.  I  can't 
help  lookin'  at  the  old  woman.  Corned-beef-days 
she  's  tolerable  calm.  Roastin'-days  she  worries  some, 
'n'  keeps  a  sharp  eye  on  the  chap  that  carves.  But 
when  there  's  anything  in  the  poultry  line,  it  seems 
to  hurt  her  feelin's  so  to  see  the  knife  goin'  into  the 
breast  and  joints  comin'  to  pieces,  that  there  's  no 
comfort  in  eatin'.  When  I  cut  up  an  old  fowl  and 
help  the  boarders,  I  always  feel  as  if  I  ought  to  say, 
Won't  you  have  a  slice  of  widdah?  —  instead  of 
chicken. 

The  young  man  John  fell  into  a  train  of  reflections 
which  ended  in  his  producing  a  Bologna  sausage,  a 
plate  of  "crackers,"  as  we  Boston  folks  call  certain 
biscuits,  and  the  bottle  of  whiskey  described  as  being 
Al. 

Under  the  influence  of  the  crackers  and  sausage, 
he  grew  cordial  and  communicative. 

It  was  time,  I  thought,  to  sound  him  as  to  those  of 
our  boarders  who  had  excited  my  curiosity. 

What  do  you  think  of  our  young  Iris  ?  —  I  began. 

Fust-rate  little  filly ;  —  he  said.  —  Pootiest  and 
nicest  little  chap  I  've  seen  since  the  schoolma'am  left. 
Schoolma'am  was  a  brown-haired  one,  —  eyes  coffee- 
color.  This  one  has  got  wine-colored  eyes,  —  'n' 


170    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that  's  the  reason  they  turn  a  fellah's  head,  I  sup 
pose. 

This  is  a  splendid  blonde,  —  I  said,  —  the  other 
was  a  brunette.  Which  style  do  you  like  best? 

Which  do  I  like  best,  boiled  mutton  or  roast  mut 
ton? —  said  the  young  man  John.  Like  'em  both, 
—  it  a'n't  the  color  of  'em  makes  the  goodness.  I  've 
been  kind  of  lonely  since  schoolma'am  went  away. 
Used  to  like  to  look  at  her.  I  never  said  anything 
particular  to  her,  that  I  remember,  but  — 

I  don't  know  whether  it  was  the  cracker  and  sau 
sage,  or  that  the  young  fellow's  feet  were  treading  on 
the  hot  ashes  of  some  longing  that  had  not  had  tune 
to  cool,  but  his  eye  glistened  as  he  stopped. 

I  suppose  she  would  n't  have  looked  at  a  fellah  like 
me, — he  said, — but  I  come  pretty  near  tryin'.  If 
she  had  said,  Yes,  though,  I  shouldn't  have  known 
what  to  have  done  with  her.  Can't  marry  a  woman 
now-a-days  till  you  're  so  deaf  you  have  to  cock  your 
head  like  a  parrot  to  hear  what  she  says,  and  so  long 
sighted  you  can't  see  what  she  looks  like  nearer  than 
arm's-length. 

Here  is  another  chance  for  you,  —  I  said.  —  What 
do  you  want  nicer  than  such  a  young  lady  as  Iris? 

It 's  no  use,  — he  answered.  — I  look  at  them  girls 
and  feel  as  the  fellah  did  when  he  missed  catchin'  the 
trout.  —  'To'od  'a'  cost  more  butter  to  cook  him  'n' 
he  's  worth,  — says  the  fellah.  — Takes  a  whole  piece 
o'  goods  to  cover  a  girl  up  now-a-days.  I  'd  as  lief 
undertake  to  keep  a  span  of  elephants,  —  and  take 
an  ostrich  to  board,  too,  —  as  to  marry  one  of  'em. 
What 's  the  use?  Clerks  and  counter-jumpers  ain't 
anything.  Sparragrass  and  green  peas  a'n't  for 
them,  —  not  while  they  're  young  and  tender.  Hoss- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    171 

back-ridin'  a'n't  for  them,  —  except  once  a  year,  — 
on  Fast-day.  And  marryin'  a'n't  for  them.  Some 
times  a  fellah  feels  lonely,  and  would  like  to  have  a 
nice  young  woman,  to  tell  her  how  lonely  he  feels. 
And  sometimes  a  fellah,  —  here  the  young  man  John 
looked  very  confidential,  and,  perhaps,  as  if  a  little 
ashamed  of  his  weakness,  —  sometimes  a  fellah  would 
like  to  have  one  o'  them  small  young  ones  to  trot  on 
his  knee  and  push  about  in  a  little  wagon,  —  a  kind 
of  a  little  Johnny,  you  know;  —  it 's odd  enough,  but, 
it  seems  to  me,  nobody  can  afford  them  little  articles, 
except  the  folks  that  are  so  rich  they  can  buy  every 
thing,  and  the  folks  that  are  so  poor  they  don't  want 
anything.  It  makes  nice  boys  of  us  young  fellahs, 
no  doubt !  And  it 's  pleasant  to  see  fine  young  girls 
sittin',  like  shopkeepers  behind  their  goods,  waitin', 
and  waitin',  and  waitin',  'n'  no  customers,  — and  the 
men  lingerin'  round  and  lookin'  at  the  goods,  like 
folks  that  want  to  be  customers,  but  have  n't  the 
money ! 

Do  you  think  the  deformed  gentleman  means  to 
make  love  to  Iris?  —  I  said. 

What !  Little  Boston  ask  that  girl  to  marry  him  ! 
Well,  now,  that's  comin'  of  it  a  little  too  strong. 
Yes,  I  guess  she  will  marry  him  and  carry  him  round 
in  a  basket,  like  a  lame  bantam :  Look  here !  —  he 
said,  mysteriously;  —  one  of  the  boarders  swears 
there  's  a  woman  comes  to  see  him,  and  that  he  has 
heard  her  singin'  and  screechin'.  I  should  like  to 
know  what  he  's  about  in  that  den  of  his.  He  lays 
low  'n'  keeps  dark,  — and,  I  tell  you,  there  's  a  good 
many  of  the  boarders  would  like  to  get  into  his  cham 
ber,  but  he  don't  seem  to  want  'em.  Biddy  could 
tell  somethin'  about  what  she  's  seen  when  she  's  been 


172    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to  put  his  room  to  rights.  She  's  a  Paddy  'n'  a  fool, 
but  she  knows  enough  to  keep  her  tongue  still.  All 
I  know  is,  I  saw  her  crossin'  herself  one  day  when 
she  came  out  of  that  room.  She  looked  pale  enough, 
"n'  I  heard  her  mutterin'  somethin'  or  other  about  the 
Blessed  Virgin.  If  it  had  n't  been  for  the  double 
doors  to  that  chamber  of  his,  I  'd  have  had  a  squint 
inside  before  this;  but,  somehow  or  other,  it  never 
seems  to  happen  that  they  're  both  open  at  once. 

What  do  you  think  he  employs  himself  about  ?  — 
said  I. 

The  young  man  John  winked. 

I  waited  patiently  for  the  thought,  of  which  this 
wink  was  the  blossom,  to  come  to  fruit  in  words. 

I  don't  believe  in  witches,  —  said  the  young  man 
John. 

Nor  I. 

We  were  both  «ilent  for  a  few  minutes. 

—  Did  you  ever  see  the  young  girl's  drawing-books, 
—  I  said,  presently. 

All  but  one,  —  he  answered ;  —  she  keeps  a  lock  on 
that,  and  won't  show  it.  Ma'am  Allen,  (the  young 
rogue  sticks  to  that  name,  in  speaking  of  the  gentle 
man  with  the  diamond,}  Ma'am  Allen  tried  to  peek 
into  it  one  day  when  she  left  it  on  the  sideboard. 
"If  you  please,"  says  she,  —  'n'  took  it  from  him, 
'n'  gave  him  a  look  that  made  him  curl  up  like  a  cat 
erpillar  on  a  hot  shovel.  I  only  wished  he  had  n't, 
and  had  jest  given  her  a  little  saas,  for  I  've  been 
takin'  boxin' -lessons,  'n'  I  've  got  a  new  way  of 
counterin'  I  want  to  try  on  to  somebody. 

-  The  end  of  all  this  was,  that  I  came  away  from 
the  young  fellow's  room,  feeling  that  there  were  two 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    173 

principal  things  that  I  had  to  live  for,  for  the  next 
six  weeks  or  six  months,  if  it  should  take  so  long. 
These  were,  to  get  a  sight  of  the  young  girl's  drawing- 
book,  which  I  suspected  had  her  heart  shut  up  in  it, 
and  to  get  a  look  into  the  Little  Gentleman's  room. 

I  don't  doubt  you  think  it  rather  absurd  that  I 
should  trouble  myself  about  these  matters.  You  tell 
me,  with  some  show  of  reason,  that  all  I  shall  find  in 
the  young  girl's  book  will  be  some  outlines  of  angels 
with  immense  eyes,  traceries  of  flowers,  rural  sketches, 
and  caricatures,  among  which  I  shall  probably  have 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  my  own  features  figuring. 
Very  likely.  But  I  '11  teU  you  what  /think  I  shall 
find.  If  this  child  has  idealized  the  strange  little  bit 
of  humanity  over  which  she  seems  to  have  spread  her 
wings  like  a  brooding  dove,  —  if,  in  one  of  those  wild 
vagaries  that  passionate  natures  are  so  liable  to,  she 
has  fairly  sprung  upon  him  with  her  clasping  nature, 
as  the  sea-flowers  fold  about  the  first  stray  shell-fish 
that  brushes  their  outspread  tentacles,  depend  upon 
it,  I  shall  find  the  marks  of  it  in  this  drawing-book 
of  hers,  —  if  I  can  ever  get  a  look  at  it,  —  fairly,  of 
course,  for  I  would  not  play  tricks  to  satisfy  my  curi 
osity. 

Then,  if  I  can  get  into  this  Little  Gentleman's 
room  under  any  fair  pretext,  I  shall,  no  doubt,  sat 
isfy  myself  in  five  minutes  that  he  is  just  like  other 
people,  and  that  there  is  no  particular  mystery  about 
him. 

The  night  after  my  visit  to  the  young  man  John,  I 
made  all  these  and  many  more  reflections.  It  was 
about  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  — bright  starlight, 
—  so  light  that  I  could  make  out  the  time  on  my 
alarm-clock,  —  when  I  woke  up  trembling  and  very 


174    THE    PROFESSOR  AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

moist.  It  was  the  heavy  dragging  sound,  as  I  had 
often  heard  it  before  that  waked  me.  Presently  a 
window  was  softly  closed.  I  had  just  begun  to  get 
over  the  agitation  with  which  we  always  awake  from 
nightmare  dreams,  when  I  heard  the  sound  which 
seemed  to  me  as  of  a  woman's  voice,  —  the  clearest, 
purest  soprano  which  one  could  well  conceive  of.  It 
was  not  loud,  and  I  could  not  distinguish  a  word,  if 
it  was  a  woman's  voice;  but  there  were  recurring 
phrases  of  sound  and  snatches  of  rhythm  that  reached 
me,  which  suggested  the  idea  of  complaint,  and  some 
times,  I  thought,  of  passionate  grief  and  despair.  It 
died  away  at  last,  —  and  then  I  heard  the  opening  of 
a  door,  followed  by  a  low,  monotonous  sound,  as  of 
one  talking,  —  and  then  the  closing  of  a  door,  —  and 
presently  the  light  on  the  opposite  wall  disappeared 
and  all  was  still  for  the  night. 

By  George  !  this  gets  interesting,  —  I  said,  as  I  got 
out  of  bed  for  a  change  of  night-clothes. 

I  had  this  in  my  pocket  the  other  day,  but  thought 
I  would  n't  read  it  at  our  celebration.  So  I  read  it 
to  the  boarders  instead,  and  print  it  to  finish  off  this 
record  with. 

ROBINSON  OF  LEYDEN. 

He  sleeps  not  here  ;  in  hope  and  prayer 
His  wandering  flock  had  gone  before, 

But  he,  the  shepherd,  might  not  share 
Their  sorrows  on  the  wintry  shore. 

Before  the  Speedwell's  anchor  swung, 
Ere  yet  the  Mayflower's  sail  was  spread, 

While  round  his  feet  the  Pilgrims  clung, 
The  pastor  spake,  and  thus  he  said  :  — 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    175 

"Men,  brethren,  sisters,  children  dear  ! 
God  calls  you  hence  from  over  sea  ; 
Ye  may  not  build  by  Haerlem  Meet, 
Nor  yet  along  the  Zuyder-Zee. 

"  Ye  go  to  bear  the  saving  word 

To  tribes  uniiamed  and  shores  untrod  : 
Heed  well  the  lessons  ye  have  heard 
From  those  old  teachers  taught  of  God. 

"  Yet  think  not  unto  them  was  lent 

All  light  for  all  the  coming  days, 
And  Heaven's  eternal  wisdom  spent 
In  making  straight  the  ancient  ways. 

"  The  living  fountain  overflows 

For  every  flock,  for  every  lamb, 
Nor  heeds,  though  angry  creeds  oppose 
With  Luther's  dike  or  Calvin's  dam. " 

He  spake  ;  with  lingering,  long  embrace, 

With  tears  of  love  and  partings  fond, 
They  floated  down  the  creeping  Maas, 

Along  the  isle  of  Ysselmond. 

They  passed  the  frowning  towers  of  Briel, 
The  "  Hook  of  Holland's  "  shelf  of  sand, 

And  grated  soon  with  lifting  keel 
The  sullen  shores  of  Fatherland. 

No  home  for  these  !  —  too  well  they  knew 
The  mitred  king  behind  the  throne  ;  — 

The  sails  were  set,  the  pennons  flew, 
And  westward  ho  !  for  worlds  unknown. 

—  And  these  were  they  who  gave  us  birth, 

The  Pilgrims  of  the  sunset  wave, 
Who  won  for  us  this  virgin  earth, 

And  freedom  with  the  soil  they  gave. 


176    THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The  pastor  slumbers  by  the  Rhine,  — 

In  alien  earth  the  exiles  lie,  — 
Their  nameless  graves  our  holiest  shrine, 

His  words  our  noblest  battle-cry  ! 

Still  cry  them,  and  the  world  shall  hear, 
Ye  dwellers  by  the  storm-swept  sea  ! 

Ye  have  not  built  by  Haerlem  Meer, 
Nor  on  the  land-locked  Zuyder-Zee  ! 


vni. 

There  has  been  a  sort  of  stillness  in  the  atmosphere 
of  our  boarding-house  since  my  last  record,  as  if 
something  or  other  were  going  on.  There  is  no  par 
ticular  change  that  I  can  think  of  in  the  aspect  of 
things ;  yet  I  have  a  feeling  as  if  some  game  of  life 
were  quietly  playing  and  strange  forces  were  at  work, 
underneath  this  smooth  surface  of  every-day  boarding- 
house  life,  which  would  show  themselves  some  fine 
morning  or  other  in  events,  if  not  in  catastrophes. 
I  have  been  watchful,  as  I  said  I  should  be,  but  have 
little  to  tell  as  yet.  You  may  laugh  at  me,  and  very 
likely  think  me  foolishly  fanciful  to  trouble  myself 
about  what  is  going  on  in  a  middling-class  household 
like  ours.  Do  as  you  like.  But  here  is  that  terrible 
fact  to  begin  with,  —  a  beautiful  young  girl,  with  the 
blood  and  the  nerve-fibre  that  belong  to  Nature's 
women,  turned  loose  among  live  men. 

—  Terrible  fact? 

Very  terrible.  Nothing  more  so.  Do  you  forget 
the  angels  who  lost  heaven  for  the  daughters  of  men? 
Do  you  forget  Helen,  and  the  fair  women  who  made 
mischief  and  set  nations  by  the  ears  before  Helen  was 
born?  If  jealousies  that  gnaw  men's  hearts  out  of  . 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    177 

their  bodies,  —  if  pangs  that  waste  men  to  shadows 
and  drive  them  into  raving  madness  or  moping  mel 
ancholy,  —  if  assassination  and  suicide  are  dreadful 
possibilities,  then  there  is  always  something  frightful 
about  a  lovely  young  woman.  —  I  love  to  look  at  this 
"Rainbow,"  as  her  father  used  sometimes  to  call  her, 
of  ours.  Handsome  creature  that  she  is  in  forms  and 
colors,  —  the  very  picture,  as  it  seems  to  me,  of  that 
"golden  blonde  "  my  friend  whose  book  you  read  last 
year  fell  in  love  with  when  he  was  a  boy,  (as  you  re 
member,  no  doubt,)  —  handsome  as  she  is,  fit  for  a 
sea-king's  bride,  it  is  not  her  beauty  alone  that  holds 
my  eyes  upon  her.  Let  me  tell  you  one  of  my  fan 
cies,  and  then  you  will  understand  the  strange  sort  of 
fascination  she  has  for  me. 

It  is  in  the  hearts  of  many  men  and  women  —  let 
me  add  children  —  that  there  is  a  Great  Secret  wait 
ing  for  them,  —  a  secret  of  which  they  get  hints  now 
and  then,  perhaps  oftener  in  early  than  in  later  years. 
These  hints  come  sometimes  in  dreams,  sometimes  in 
sudden  startling  flashes,  —  second  wakings,  as  it  were, 
—  a  waking  out  of  the  waking  state,  which  last  is  very 
apt  to  be  a  half-sleep.  I  have  many  times  stopped 
short  and  held  my  breath,  and  felt  the  blood  leaving 
my  cheeks,  in  one  of  these  sudden  clairvoyant  flashes. 
Of  course  I  cannot  tell  what  kind  of  a  secret  this  is, 
but  I  think  of  it  as  a  disclosure  of  certain  relations  of 
our  personal  being  to  time  and  space,  to  other  intelli 
gences,  to  the  procession  of  events,  and  to  their  First 
Great  Cause.  This  secret  seems  to  be  broken  up,  as 
it  were,  into  fragments,  so  that  we  find  here  a  word 
and  there  a  syllable,  and  then  again  only  a  letter  of 
it ;  but  it  never  is  written  out  for  most  of  us  as  a  com 
plete  sentence,  in  this  life.  I  do  not  think  it  could 


178    THE   PKOFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

be;  for  I  am  disposed  to  consider  our  beliefs  about 
such  a  possible  disclosure  rather  as  a  kind  of  premo 
nition  of  an  enlargement  of  our  faculties  in  some  future 
state  than  as  an  expectation  to  be  fulfilled  for  most  of 
us  in  this  life.  Persons,  however,  have  fallen  into 
trances,  —  as  did  the  Reverend  William  Tennent, 
among  many  others,  —  and  learned  some  things  which 
they  could  not  tell  in  our  human  words. 

Now  am :>ng  the  visible  objects  which  hint  to  us  frag 
ments  of  this  infinite  secret  for  which  our  souls  are 
waiting,  the  faces  of  women  are  those  that  carry  the 
most  legible  hieroglyphics  of  the  great  mystery. 
There  are  women's  faces,  some  real,  some  ideal, 
which  contain  something  in  them  that  becomes  a  posi 
tive  element  in  our  creed,  so  direct  and  palpable  a 
revelation  is  it  of  the  infinite  purity  and  love.  I  re 
member  two  faces  of  women  with  wings,  such  as  they 
call  angels,  of  Fra  Angelico,  —  and  I  just  now  came 
across  a  print  of  Raphael's  Santa  Apollina,  writh  some 
thing  of  the  same  quality,  —  which  I  was  sure  had 
their  prototypes  in  the  world  above  ours.  No  won 
der  the  Catholics  pay  their  vows  to  the  Queen  of 
Heaven  !  The  unpoetical  side  of  Protestantism  is, 
that  it  has  no  women  to  be  worshipped. 

But  mind  you,  it  is  not  every  beautiful  face  that 
hints  the  Great  Secret  to  us,  nor  is  it  only  in  beautiful 
faces  that  we  find  traces  of  it.  Sometimes  it  looks 
out  from  a  sweet  sad  eye,  the  only  beauty  of  a  plain 
countenance ;  sometimes  there  is  so  much  meaning  in 
the  lips  of  a  woman,  not  otherwise  fascinating,  that  we 
know  they  have  a  message  for  us,  and  wait  almost 
with  awe  to  hear  their  accents.  But  this  young  girl 
has  at  once  the  beauty  of  feature  and  the  unspoken 
mystery  of  expression.  Can  she  tell  me  anything? 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    179 

Is  her  life  a  complement  of  mine,  with  the  missing 
element  in  it  which  I  have  been  groping  after  through 
so  many  friendships  that  I  have  tired  of,  and  through 

—  Hush  !     Is  the  door  fast  ?     Talking  loud  is  a  bad 
trick  in  these  curious  boarding-houses. 

You  must  have  sometimes  noted  this  fact  that  I  am 
going  to  remind  you  of  and  to  use  for  a  special  illus 
tration.  Riding  along  over  a  rocky  road,  suddenly 
the  slow  monotonous  grinding  of  the  crushing  gravel 
changes  to  a  deep  heavy  rumble.  There  is  a  great 
hollow  under  your  feet,  —  a  huge  unsunned  cavern. 
Deep,  deep  beneath  you  in  the  core  of  the  living  rock, 
it  arches  its  awful  vault,  and  far  away  it  stretches  its 
winding  galleries,  their  roofs  dripping  into  streams 
where  fishes  have  been  swimming  and  spawning  in  the 
dark  until  their  scales  are  white  as  milk  and  their 
eyes  have  withered  out,  obsolete  and  useless. 

So  it  is  in  life.  We  jog  quietly  along,  meeting 
the  same  faces,  grinding  over  the  same  thoughts,  — 
the  gravel  of  the  soul's  highway,  —  now  and  then 
jarred  against  an  obstacle  we  cannot  crush,  but  must 
ride  over  or  round  as  we  best  may,  sometimes  bringing 
short  up  against  a  disappointment,  but  still  working 
along  with  the  creaking  and  rattling  and  grating  and 
jerking  that  belong  to  the  journey  of  life,  even  in 
the  smoothest-rolling  vehicle.  Suddenly  we  hear  the 
deep  underground  reverberation  that  reveals  the  un 
suspected  depth  of  some  abyss  of  thought  or  passion 
beneath  us.  — 

I  wish  the  girl  would  go.  I  don't  like  to  look  at 
her  so  much,  and  yet  I  cannot  help  it.  Always  that 
same  expression  of  something  that  I  ought  to  know, 

—  something  that  she  was  made  to  tell  and  I  to  hear, 

—  lying  there  ready  to  fall  off  from  her  lips,  ready  to 


180   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

leap  out  of  her  eyes  and  make  a  saint  of  me,  or  a  devil 
or  a  lunatic,  or  perhaps  a  prophet  to  tell  the  truth  and 
be  hated  of  men,  or  a  poet  whose  words  shall  flash 
upon  the  dry  stubble-field  of  worn-out  thoughts  and 
burn  over  an  age  of  lies  in  an  hour  of  passion. 

It  suddenly  occurs  to  me  that  I  may  have  put  you 
on  the  wrong  track.  The  Great  Secret  that  I  refer  to 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  Three  Words.  Set  your 
mind  at  ease  about  that,  —  there  are  reasons  I  could 
give  you  which  settle  all  that  matter.  I  don't  won 
der,  however,  that  you  confounded  the  Great  Secret 
with  the  Three  Words. 

I  LOVE  YOU  is  all  the  secret  that  many,  nay,  most 
women  have  to  tell.  When  that  is  said,  they  are  like 
China-crackers  on  the  morning  of  the  fifth  of  July. 
And  just  as  that  little  patriotic  implement  is  made 
with  a  slender  train  which  leads  to  the  magazine  in  its 
interior,  so  a  sharp  eye  can  almost  always  see  the 
train  leading  from  a  young  girl's  eye  or  lip  to  the  "I 
love  you "  in  her  heart.  But  the  Three  Words  are 
not  the  Great  Secret  I  mean.  No,  women's  faces  are 
only  one  of  the  tablets  on  which  that  is  written  in  its 
partial,  fragmentary  symbols.  It  lies  deeper  than 
Love,  though  very  probably  Love  is  a  part  of  it. 
Some,  I  think,  —  Wordsworth  might  be  one  of  them, 
—  spell  out  a  portion  of  it  from  certain  beautiful  nat 
ural  objects,  landscapes,  flowers,  and  others.  I  can 
mention  several  poems  of  his  that  have  shadowy  hints 
which  seem  to  me  to  come  near  the  region  where  I 
think  it  lies.  I  have  known  two  persons  who  pur 
sued  it  with  the  passion  of  the  old  alchemists,  —  all 
wrong  evidently,  but  infatuated,  and  never  giving  up 
the  daily  search  for  it  until  they  got  tremulous  and 
feeble,  and  their  dreams  changed  to  visions  of  things 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    181 

that  ran  and  crawled  about  their  floor  and  ceilings, 
and  so  they  died.  The  vulgar  called  them  drunkards. 

I  told  you  that  I  would  let  you  know  the  mystery 
of  the  effect  this  young  girl's  face  produces  on  me. 
It  is  akin  to  those  influences  a  friend  of  mine  has 
described,  you  may  remember,  as  coming  from  certain 
voices.  I  cannot  translate  it  into  words,  —  only  into 
feelings;  and  these  I  have  attempted  to  shadow  by 
showing  that  her  face  hinted  that  revelation  of  some 
thing  we  are  close  to  knowing,  which  all  imaginative 
persons  are  looking  for  either  in  this  world  or  on  the 
very  threshold  of  the  next. 

You  shake  your  head  at  the  vagueness  and  fanciful 
incomprehensibleness  of  my  description  of  the  expres 
sion  in  a  young  girl's  face.  You  forget  what  a  mis 
erable  surface-matter  this  language  is  in  which  we  try 
to  reproduce  our  interior  state  of  being.  Articulation 
is  a  shallow  trick.  From  the  light  Poh !  which  we 
toss  off  from  our  lips  as  we  fling  a  nameless  scrib 
bler's  impertinence  into  our  waste-baskets,  to  the 
gravest  utterances  which  comes  from  our  throats  in 
our  moments  of  deepest  need,  is  only  a  space  of  some 
three  or  four  inches.  Words,  which  are  a  set  of 
clickings,  hissings,  lispings,  and  so  on,  mean  very 
little,  compared  to  tones  and  expression  of  the  fea 
tures.  I  give  it  up;  I  thought  I  could  shadow  forth 
in  some  feeble  way,  by  their  aid,  the  effect  this  young 
girl's  face  produces  on  my  imagination;  but  it  is  of 
no  use.  No  doubt  your  head  aches,  trying  to  make 
something  of  my  description.  If  there  is  here  and 
there  one  that  can  make  anything  intelligible  out  of 
my  talk  about  the  Great  Secret,  and  who  has  spelt 
out  a  syllable  or  two  of  it  on  some  woman's  face,  dead 
or  living,  that  is  all  I  can  expect.  One  should  see 


182   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  person  with  whom  he  converses  about  such  mat 
ters.  There  are  dreamy-eyed  people  to  whom  I 
should  say  all  these  things  with  a  certainty  of  being 
understood ;  — 

That  moment  that  his  face  I  see, 
I  know  the  man  that  must  hear  me  : 
To  him  my  tale  I  teach. 

—  I  am  afraid  some  of  them  have  not  got  a  spare 
quarter  of  a  dollar  for  this  August  number,  so  that 
they  will  never  see  it. 

—  Let  us  start  again,  just  as  if  we  had  not  made 
this  ambitious  attempt,  which  may  go  for  nothing, 
and  you  can  have  your  money  refunded,  if  you  will 
make  the  change. 

This  young  girl,  about  whom  I  have  talked  so  un 
intelligibly,  is  the  unconscious  centre  of  attraction  to 
the  whole  solar  system  of  our  breakfast-table.  The 
Little  Gentleman  leans  towards  her,  and  she  again 
seems  to  be  swayed  as  by  some  invisible  gentle  force 
towards  him.  That  slight  inclination  of  two  persons 
with  a  strong  affinity  towards  each  other,  throwing 
them  a  little  out  of  plumb  when  they  sit  side  by  side, 
is  a  physical  fact  I  have  often  noticed.  Then  there  is 
a  tendency  in  all  the  men's  eyes  to  converge  on  her; 
and  I  do  firmly  believe,  that,  if  all  their  chairs  were 
examined,  they  would  be  found  a  little  obliquely 
placed,  so  as  to  favor  the  direction  in  which  their 
occupants  love  to  look. 

That  bland,  quiet  old  gentleman,  of  whom  I  have 
spoken  as  sitting  opposite  to  me,  is  no  exception  to 
the  rule.  She  brought  down  some  mignonette  one 
morning,  which  she  had  grown  in  her  chamber.  She 
gave  a  sprig  to  her  little  neighbor,  and  one  to  the 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    183 

landlady,  and  sent  another  by  the  hand  of  Bridget  to 
this  old  gentleman. 

—  Sarvant,  Ma'am  !  Much  obleeged,  —  he  said, 
and  put  it  gallantly  in  his  button-hole.  —  After  break 
fast  he  must  see  some  of  her  drawings.  Very  fine  per 
formances,  —  very  fine  !  —  truly  elegant  productions, 
—  truly  elegant!  — Had  seen  Miss  Linwood's  needle 
work  in  London,  in  the  year  (eighteen  hundred  and 
little  or  nothing,  I  think  he  said,)  —  patronized  by 
the  nobility  and  gentry,  and  Her  Majesty,  —  elegant, 
truly  elegant  productions,  very  fine  performances; 
these  drawings  reminded  him  of  them;  —  wonderful 
resemblance  to  Nature;  an  extraordinary  art,  paint 
ing  ;  Mr.  Copley  made  some  very  fine  pictures  that 
he  remembered  seeing  when  he  was  a  boy.  Used  to 
remember  some  lines  about  a  portrait  written  by  Mr. 
Cowper,  beginning,  — 

"  Oh  that  those  lips  had  language  !     Life  has  pass'd 
With  me  but  roughly  since  I  heard  thee  last." 

And  with  this  the  old  gentleman  fell  to  thinking 
about  a  dead  mother  of  his  that  he  remembered  ever 
so  much  younger  than  he  now  was,  and  looking,  not 
as  his  mother,  but  as  his  daughter  should  look.  The 
dead  young  mother  was  looking  at  the  old  man,  her 
child,  as  she  used  to  look  at  him  so  many,  many  years 
ago.  He  stood  still  as  if  in  a  waking  dream,  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  drawings  till  their  outlines  grew  indistinct 
and  they  ran  into  each  other,  and  a  pale,  sweet  face 
shaped  itself  out  of  the  glimmering  light  through 
which  he  saw  them.  —  What  is  there  quite  so  pro 
foundly  human  as  an  old  man's  memory  of  a  mother 
who  died  in  his  earlier  years?  Mother  she  remains 
till  manhood,  and  by-and-by  she  grows  to  be  as  a 


184    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sister;  and  at  last,  when,  wrinkled  and  bowed  and 
broken,  he  looks  back  upon  her  in  her  fair  youth, 
he  sees  in  the  sweet  image  he  caresses,  not  his  parent, 
but,  as  it  were,  his  child. 

If  I  had  not  seen  all  this  in  the  old  gentleman's 
face,  the  words  with  which  he  broke  his  silence 
would  have  betrayed  his  train  of  thought. 

—  If  they  had  only  taken  pictures  then  as  they  do 
now  !  —  he  said.  —  All  gone  !  all  gone  !  nothing  but 
her  face  as  she  leaned  on  the  arms  of  her  great  chair ; 
and  I  would  give  a  hundred  pound  for  the  poorest  lit 
tle  picture  of  her,  such  as  you  can  buy  for  a  shilling 
of  anybody  that  you  don't  want  to  see.  —  The  old  gen 
tleman  put  his  hand  to  his  forehead  so  as  to  shade  his 
eyes.  I  saw  he  was  looking  at  the  dim  photograph  of 
memory,  and  turned  from  him  to  Iris. 

How  many  drawing-books  have  you  filled,  —  I  said, 

—  since  you  began  to  take  lessons?  —  This  was  the 
first,  —  she  answered,  —  since  she  was   here ;  and  it 
was  not  full,  but  there  were  many  separate  sheets  of 
large  size  she  had  covered  with  drawings. 

I  turned  over  the  leaves  of  the  book  before  us. 
Academic  studies,  principally  of  the  human  figure. 
Heads  of  sibyls,  prophets,  and  so  forth.  Limbs 
from  statues.  Hands  and  feet  from  Nature.  What 
a  superb  drawing  of  an  arm !  I  don't  remember  it 
among  the  figures  from  Michel  Angelo,  which  seem 
to  have  been  her  patterns  mainly.  From  Nature,  I 
think,  or  after  a  cast  from  Nature.  —  Oh  !  - 

—  Your  smaller  studies  are  in  this,  I  suppose,  —  I 
said,  taking  up  the  drawing-book  with  a  lock  on  it. 

—  Yes,  —  she  said.  —  I  should  like  to  see  her  style  of 
working  on  a  small  scale.  —  There  was  nothing  in  it 
worth  showing,  —  she  said ;  and  presently  I  saw  her 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    185 

try  the  lock,  which  proved  to  be  fast.  We  are  all 
caricatured  in  it,  I  have  n't  the  least  doubt.  I  think, 
though,  I  could  tell  by  her  way  of  dealing  with  us 
what  her  fancies  were  about  us  boarders.  Some  of 
them  act  as  if  they  were  bewitched  with  her,  but  she 
does  not  seem  to  notice  it  much.  Her  thoughts  seem 
to  be  on  her  little  neighbor  more  than  on  anybody  else. 
The  young  fellow  John  appears  to  stand  second  in  her 
good  graces.  I  think  he  has  once  or  twice  sent  her 
what  the  landlady's  daughter  calls  bo-kays  of  flowers, 
—  somebody  has,  at  any  rate.  —  I  saw  a  book  she 
had,  which  must  have  come  from  the  divinity-student. 
It  had  a  dreary  title-page,  which  she  had  enlivened 
with  a  fancy  portrait  of  the  author,  —  a  face  from 
memory,  apparently,  —  one  of  those  faces  that  small 
children  loathe  without  knowing  why,  and  which  give 
them  that  inward  disgust  for  heaven  so  many  of  the 
little  wretches  betray,  when  they  hear  that  these  are 
"good  men,"  and  that  heaven  is  full  of  such.  — The 
gentleman  with  the  diamond  —  the  Koh-i-noor,  so 
called  by  us  —  was  not  encouraged,  I  think,  by  the 
reception  of  his  packet  of  perfumed  soap.  He  pulls 
his  purple  moustache  and  looks  appreciatingly  at  Iris, 
who  never  sees  him,  as  it  should  seem.  The  young 
Marylander,  who  I  thought  would  have  been  in  love 
with  her  before  this  time,  sometimes  looks  from  his 
corner  across  the  long  diagonal  of  the  table,  as  much 
as  to  say,  I  wish  you  were  up  here  by  me,  or  I  were 
down  there  by  you,  —  which  would,  perhaps,  be  a 
more  natural  arrangement  than  the  present  one.  But 
nothing  comes  of  all  this,  —  and  nothing  has  come  of 
my  sagacious  idea  of  finding  out  the  girl's  fancies  by 
looking  into  her  locked  drawing-book. 

Not  to  give  up  all  the  questions  I  was  determined 


186    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to  solve,  I  made  an  attempt  also  to  work  into  the 
Little  Gentleman's  chamber.  For  this  purpose,  I 
kept  him  in  conversation,  one  morning,  until  he  was 
just  ready  to  go  up-stairs,  and  then,  as  if  to  continue 
the  talk,  followed  him  as  he  toiled  back  to  his  room. 
He  rested  on  the  landing  and  faced  round  toward  me. 
There  was  something  in  his  eye  which  said,  Stop 
there  !  So  we  finished  our  conversation  on  the  land 
ing.  The  next  day,  I  mustered  assurance  enough  to 
knock  at  his  door,  having  a  pretext  ready.  —  No  an 
swer.  —  Knock  again.  A  door,  as  if  of  a  cabinet,  was 
shut  softly  and  locked,  and  presently  I  heard  the  pecul 
iar  dead  beat  of  his  thick-soled,  misshapen  boots. 
The  bolts  and  the  lock  of  the  inner  door  were  unfas 
tened,  —  with  unnecessary  noise,  I  thought,  —  and  he 
came  into  the  passage.  He  pulled  the  inner  door 
after  him  and  opened  the  outer  one  at  which  I  stood. 
He  had  on  a  flowered  silk  dressing-gown,  such  as 
"Mr.  Copley  "used  to  paint  his  old-fashioned  mer 
chant-princes  in;  and  a  quaint-looking  key  in  his 
hand.  Our  conversation  was  short,  but  long  enough 
to  convince  me  that  the  Little  Gentleman  did  not 
want  my  company  in  his  chamber,  and  did  not  mean 
to  have  it. 

I  have  been  making  a  great  fuss  about  what  is  no 
mystery  at  all,  — a  schoolgirl's  secrets  and  a  whimsi 
cal  man's  habits.  I  mean  to  give  up  such  nonsense 
and  mind  my  own  business.  —  Hark  !  What  the 
deuse  is  that  odd  noise  in  his  chamber? 

—  I  think  I  am  a  little  superstitious.  There  were 
two  things,  when  I  was  a  boy,  that  diabolized  my  im 
agination,  —  I  mean,  that  gave  me  a  distinct  appre 
hension  of  a  formidable  bodily  shape  which  prowled 
round  the  neighborhood  where  I  was  born  and  bred. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    187 

The  first  was  a  series  of  marks  called  the  "Devil's 
footsteps."  These  were  patches  of  sand  in  the  pas 
tures,  where  no  grass  grew,  where  the  low-bush  black 
berry,  the  "dewberry,"  as  our  Southern  neighbors 
call  it,  in  prettier  and  more  Shakspearian  language, 
did  not  spread  its  clinging  creepers,  —  where  even  the 
pale,  dry,  sadly-sweet  "  everlasting  "  could  not  grow, 
but  all  was  bare  and  blasted.  The  second  was  a  mark 
in  one  of  the  public  buildings  near  my  home,  —  the 
college  dormitory  named  after  a  Colonial  Governor. 
I  do  not  think  many  persons  are  aware  of  the  exist 
ence  of  this  mark,  —  little  having  been  said  about  the 
story  in  print,  as  it  was  considered  very  desirable,  for 
the  sake  of  the  Institution,  to  hush  it  up.  In  the 
northwest  corner,  and  on  the  level  of  the  third  or 
fourth  story,  there  are  signs  of  a  breach  in  the  walls, 
mended  pretty  well,  but  not  to  be  mistaken.  A 
considerable  portion  of  that  corner  must  have  been 
carried  away,  from  within  outward.  It  was  an  un 
pleasant  affair ;  and  I  do  not  care  to  repeat  the  partic 
ulars;  but  some  young  men  had  been  using  sacred 
things  in  a  profane  and  unlawful  way,  when  the  oc 
currence,  which  was  variously  explained,  took  place. 
The  story  of  the  Appearance  in  the  chamber  was,  I 
suppose,  invented  afterwards ;  but  of  the  injury  to  the 
building  there  could  be  no  question ;  and  the  zig-zag 
line,  where  the  mortar  is  a  little  thicker  than  before, 
is  still  distinctly  visible.  The  queer  burnt  spots, 
called  the  "Devil's  footsteps,"  had  never  attracted 
attention  before  this  time,  though  there  is  no  evidence 
that  they  had  not  existed  previously,  except  that  of 
the  late  Miss  M.,  a  "Goody,"  so  called,  or  sweeper, 
who  was  positive  on  the  subject,  but  had  a  strange 
horror  of  referring  to  an  affair  of  which  she  was 


188   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

thought  to  know  something.  —  I  tell  you  it  was  not  so 
pleasant  for  a  little  boy  of  impressible  nature  to  go  up 
to  bed  in  an  old  gambrel-roofed  house,  with  unten- 
anted,  locked  upper-chambers,  and  a  most  ghostly 
garret, — with  the  "Devil's  footsteps  "  in  the  fields 
behind  the  house  and  in  front  of  it  the  patched  dor 
mitory  where  the  unexplained  occurrence  had  taken 
place  which  startled  those  godless  youths  at  their  mock 
devotions,  so  that  one  of  them  was  epileptic  from  that 
day  forward,  and  another,  after  a  dreadful  season  of 
mental  conflict,  took  holy  orders  and  became  renowned 
for  his  ascetic  sanctity. 

There  were  other  circumstances  that  kept  up  the 
impression  produced  by  these  two  singular  facts  I  have 
just  mentioned.  There  was  a  dark  storeroom,  on 
looking  through  the  key-hole  of  which,  I  could  dimly 
see  a  heap  of  chairs  and  tables,  and  other  four-footed 
things,  which  seemed  to  me  to  have  rushed  in  there, 
frightened,  and  in  their  fright  to  have  huddled  to 
gether  and  climbed  up  on  each  other's  backs,  —  as  the 
people  did  in  that  awful  crush  where  so  many  were 
killed,  at  the  execution  of  Holloway  and  Haggerty. 
Then  the  Lady's  portrait,  up-stairs,  with  the  sword- 
thrusts  through  it,  —  marks  of  the  British  officers'  ra 
piers,  —  and  the  tall  mirror  in  which  they  used  to  look 
at  their  red  coats,  —  confound  them  for  smashing  its 
mate  !  —  and  the  deep,  cunningly  wrought  arm-chair 
in  which  Lord  Percy  used  to  sit  while  his  hair  was 
dressing; — he  was  a  gentleman,  and  always  had  it 
covered  with  a  large  peignoir,  to  save  the  silk  covering 
my  grandmother  embroidered.  Then  the  little  room 
down-stairs  from  which  went  the  orders  to  throw  up 
a  bank  of  earth  on  the  hill  yonder,  where  you  may 
now  observe  a  granite  obelisk,  —  "  the  study  "  in  my 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    189 

father's  time,  but  in  those  days  the  council-chamber 
of  armed  men,  —  sometimes  filled  with  soldiers ;  — 
come  with  me,  and  I  will  show  you  the  "dents"  left 
by  the  butts  of  their  muskets  all  over  the  floor.  — 
With  all  these  suggestive  objects  round  me,  aided  by 
the  wild  stories  those  awful  country-boys  that  came 
to  live  in  our  service  brought  with  them,  —  of  con 
tracts  written  in  blood  and  left  out  over  night,  not 
to  be  found  the  next  morning,  (removed  by  the  Evil 
One,  who  takes  his  nightly  round  among  our  dwell 
ings,  and  filed  away  for  future  use,)  —  of  dreams 
coming  true,  —  of  death-signs,  —  of  apparitions,  — 
no  wonder  that  my  imagination  got  excited,  and  I  was 
liable  to  superstitious  fancies. 

Jeremy  Bentham's  logic,  by  which  he  proved  that 
he  could  n't  possibly  see  a  ghost  is  all  very  well  —  in 
the  day-time.  All  the  reason  in  the  world  will  never 
get  those  impressions  of  childhood,  created  by  just 
such  circumstances  as  I  have  been  telling,  out  of  a 
man's  head.  That  is  the  only  excuse  I  have  to  give 
for  the  nervous  kind  of  curiosity  with  which  I  watch 
my  little  neighbor,  and  the  obstinacy  with  which  I  lie 
awake  whenever  I  hear  anything  going  on  in  "his 
chamber  after  midnight. 

But  whatever  further  observations  I  may  have  made 
must  be  deferred  for  the  present.  You  will  see  in 
what  way  it  happened  that  my  thoughts  were  turned 
from  spiritual  matters  to  bodily  ones,  and  how  I  got 
my  fancy  full  of  material  images,  —  faces,  heads,  fig 
ures,  muscles,  and  so  forth,  —  in  such  a  way  that  I 
should  have  no  chance  in  this  number  to  gratify  any 
curiosity  you  may  feel,  if  I  had  the  means  of  so  doing. 

Indeed,  I  have  come  pretty  near  omitting  my  peri 
odical  record  this  time.  It  was  all  the  work  of  a 


190   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

friend  of  mine,  who  would  have  it  that  I  should  sit  to 
him  for  my  portrait.  When  a  soul  draws  a  body  in 
the  great  lottery  of  life,  where  every  one  is  sure  of 
a  prize,  such  as  it  is,  the  said  soul  inspects  the  said 
body  with  the  same  curious  interest  with  which  one 
who  has  ventured  into  a  "gift  enterprise"  examines 
the  "massive  silver  pencil-case"  with  the  coppery 
smell  and  impressible  tube,  or  the  "splendid  gold 
ring"  with  the  questionable  specific  gravity,  which  it 
has  been  his  fortune  to  obtain  in  addition  to  his  pur 
chase. 

The  soul,  having  studied  the  article  of  which  it  finds 
itself  proprietor,  thinks,  after  a  time,  it  knows  it 
pretty  well.  But  there  is  this  difference  between  its 
view  and  that  of  a  person  looking  at  us :  —  we  look 
from  within,  and  see  nothing  but  the  mould  formed 
by  the  elements  in  which  we  are  incased ;  other  obser 
vers  look  from  without,  and  see  us  as  living  statues. 
To  be  sure,  by  the  aid  of  mirrors,  we  get  a  few 
glimpses  of  our  outside  aspect;  but  this  occasional 
impression  is  always  modified  by  that  look  of  the  soul 
from  within  outward  which  none  but  ourselves  can 
taEe.  A  portrait  is  apt,  therefore,  to  be  a  surprise 
to  us.  The  artist  looks  only  from  without.  He  sees 
us,  too,  with  a  hundred  aspects  on  our  faces  we  are 
never  likely  to  see.  No  genuine  expression  can  be 
studied  by  the  subject  of  it  in  the  looking-glass. 

More  than  this ;  he  sees  us  in  a  way  in  which  many 
of  our  friends  or  acquaintances  never  see  us.  With 
out  wearing  any  mask  we  are  conscious  of,  we  have 
a  special  face  for  each  friend.  For,  in  the  first  place, 
each  puts  a  special  reflection  of  himself  upon  us,  on 
the  principle  of  assimilation  you  found  referred  to  in 
my  last  record,  if  you  happened  to  read  that  docu- 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.   191 

ment.  And  secondly,  each  of  our  friends  is  capable 
of  seeing  just  so  far,  and  no  farther,  into  our  face, 
and  each  sees  in  it  the  particular  thing  that  he  looks 
for.  Now  the  artist,  if  he  is  truly  an  artist,  does 
not  take  any  one  of  these  special  views.  Suppose  he 
should  copy  you  as  you  appear  to  the  man  who  wants 
your  name  to  a  subscription-list,  you  could  hardly  ex 
pect  a  friend  who  entertains  you  to  recognize  the  like 
ness  to  the  smiling  face  which  sheds  its  radiance  at  his 
board.  Even  within  your  own  family,  I  am  afraid 
there  is  a  face  which  the  rich  uncle  knows,  that  is  not 
so  familiar  to  the  poor  relation.  The  artist  must  take 
one  or  the  other,  or  something  compounded  of  the  two, 
or  something  different  from  either.  What  the  da 
guerreotype  and  photograph  do  is  to  give  the  features 
and  one  particular  look,  the  very  look  which  kills  all 
expression,  that  of  self-consciousness.  The  artist 
throws  you  off  your  guard,  watches  you  in  movement 
and  in  repose,  puts  your  face  through  its  exercises, 
observes  its  transitions,  and  so  gets  the  whole  range 
of  its  expression.  Out  of  all  this  he  forms  an  ideal 
portrait,  which  is  not  a  copy  of  your  exact  look  at  any 
one  time  or  to  any  particular  person.  Such  a  portrait 
cannot  be  to  everybody  what  the  ungloved  call  "as 
nat'ral  as  life."  Every  good  picture,  therefore,  must 
be  considered  wanting  in  resemblance  by  many  per 
sons. 

There  is  one  strange  revelation  which  comes  out, 
as  the  artist  shapes  your  features  from  his  outline. 
It  is  that  you  resemble  so  many  relatives  to  whom  you 
yourself  never  had  noticed  any  particular  likeness  in 
your  countenance. 

He  is  at  work  at  me  now,  when  I  catch  some  of 
these  resemblances,  thus :  — 


192   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

There  !  that  is  just  the  look  my  father  used  to  have 
sometimes ;  I  never  thought  I  had  a  sign  of  it.  The 
mother's  eyebrow  and  grayish-blue  eye,  those  I  knew 
I  had.  But  there  is  a  something  which  recalls  a 
smile  that  faded  away  from  my  sister's  lips  —  how 
many  years  ago  !  I  thought  it  so  pleasant  in  her, 
that  I  love  myself  better  for  having  a  trace  of  it. 

Are  we  not  young?  Are  we  not  fresh  and  bloom 
ing?  Wait  a  bit.  The  artist  takes  a  mean  little 
brush  and  draws  three  fine  lines,  diverging  outwards 
from  the  eye  over  the  temple.  Five  years.  —  The 
artist  draws  one  tolerably  distinct  and  two  faint  lines, 
perpendicularly  between  the  eyebrows.  Ten  years. 
—  The  artist  breaks  up  the  contours  round  the  mouth, 
so  that  they  look  a  little  as  a  hat  does  that  has  been 
sat  upon  and  recovered  itself,  ready,  as  one  would 
say,  to  crumple  up  again  in  the  same  creases,  on  smil 
ing  or  other  change  of  feature.  —  Hold  on  !  Stop 
that !  Give  a  young  fellow  a  chance  I  Are  we  not 
whole  years  short  of  that  interesting  period  of  life 
when  Mr.  Balzac  says  that  a  man,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.? 

There  now  !  That  is  ourself ,  as  we  look  after  fin 
ishing  an  article,  getting  a  three-mile  pull  with  the 
ten-foot  sculls,  redressing  the  wrongs  of  the  toilet, 
and  standing  with  the  light  of  hope  in  our  eye  and 
the  reflection  of  a  red  curtain  on  our  cheek.  Is  he 
not  a  POET  that  painted  us? 

"  Blest  be  the  art  that  can  immortalize  ! " 

COWPER. 

—  Young  folks  look  on  a  face  as  a  unit;  children 
who  go  to  school  with  any  given  little  John  Smith  see 
in  his  name  a  distinctive  appellation,  and  in  his  fea 
tures  as  special  and  definite  an  expression  of  his  sole 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    193 

individuality  as  if  he  were  the  first  created  of  his  race. 
As  soon  as  we  are  old  enough  to  get  the  range  of  three 
or  four  generations  well  in  hand,  and  to  take  in  large 
family  histories,  we  never  see  an  individual  in  a  face 
of  any  stock  we  know,  but  a  mosaic  copy  of  a  pattern, 
with  fragmentary  tints  from  this  and  that  ancestor. 
The  analysis  of  a  face  into  its  ancestral  elements  re 
quires  that  it  should  be  examined  in  the  veiy  earliest 
infancy,  before  it  has  lost  that  ancient  and  solemn  look 
it  brings  with  it  out  of  the  past  eternity ;  and  again  in 
that  brief  space  when  Life,  the  mighty  sculptor,  has 
done  his  work,  and  Death,  his  silent  servant,  lifts 
the  veil  and  lets  us  look  at  the  marble  lines  he 
has  wrought  so  faithfully ;  and  lastly,  while  a  painter 
who  can  seize  all  the  traits  of  a  countenance  is  build 
ing  it  up,  feature  after  feature,  from  the  slight  outline 
to  the  finished  portrait. 

—  I  am  satisfied,  that,  as  we  grow  older,  we  learn 
to  look  upon  our  bodies  more  and  more  as  a  tempo 
rary  possession  and  less  and  less  as  identified  with  our 
selves.  In  early  years,  while  the  child  "feels  its  life 
in  every  limb,"  it  lives  in  the  body  and  for  the  body 
to  a  very  great  extent.  It  ought  to  be  so.  There 
have  been  many  very  interesting  children  who  have 
shown  a  wonderful  indifference  to  the  things  of  earth 
and  an  extraordinary  development  of  the  spiritual 
nature.  There  is  a  perfect  literature  of  their  biogra 
phies,  all  alike  in  their  essentials;  the  same  "disin 
clination  to  the  usual  amusements  of  childhood";  the 
same  remarkable  sensibility;  the  same  docility;  the 
same  conscientiousness;  in  short,  an  almost  uniform 
character,  marked  by  beautiful  traits,  which  we  look 
at  with  a  painful  admiration.  It  will  be  found  that 
most  of  these  children  are  the  subjects  of  some  con- 


194  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

stitutional  unfitness  for  living,  the  most  frequent  of 
which  I  need  not  mention.  They  are  like  the  beauti 
ful,  blushing,  half-grown  fruit  that  falls  before  its 
time  because  its  core  is  gnawed  out.  They  have  their 
meaning,  —  they  do  not  live  in  vain,  —  but  they  are 
windfalls.  I  am  convinced  that  many  healthy  children 
are  injured  morally  by  being  forced  to  read  too  much 
about  these  little  meek  sufferers  and  their  spiritual 
exercises.  Here  is  a  boy  that  loves  to  run,  swim, 
kick  football,  turn  somersets,  make  faces,  whittle,  fish, 
tear  his  clothes,  coast,  skate,  fire  crackers,  blow  squash 
"tooters,"  cut  his  name  on  fences,  read  about  Robinson 
Crusoe  and  Sinbad  the  Sailor,  eat  the  widest-angled 
slices  of  pie  and  untold  cakes  and  candies,  crack  nuts 
with  his  back  teeth  and  bite  out  the  better  part  of 
another  boy's  apple  with  his  front  ones,  turn  up  cop 
pers,  "stick"  knives,  call  names,  throw  stones,  knock 
off  hats,  set  mousetraps,  chalk  doorsteps,  "cut  be 
hind  "  anything  on  wheels  or  runners,  whistle  through 
his  teeth,  "holler"  Fire!  on  slight  evidence,  run 
after  soldiers,  patronize  an  engine -company,  or,  in  his 
own  words,  "blow  for  tub  No.  11,"  or  whatever  it 
may  be;  —  isn't  that  a  pretty  nice  sort  of  a  boy, 
though  he  has  not  got  anything  the  matter  with  him 
that  takes  the  taste  of  this  world  out?  Now,  when 
you  put  into  such  a  hot-blooded,  hard-fisted,  round- 
cheeked  little  rogue's  hand  a  sad -looking  volume  or 
pamphlet,  with  the  portrait  of  a  thin,  white-faced 
child,  whose  life  is  really  as  much  a  training  for  death 
as  the  last  month  of  a  condemned  criminal's  existence, 
what  does  he  find  in  common  between  his  own  over 
flowing  and  exulting  sense  of  vitality  and  the  expe 
riences  of  the  doomed  offspring  of  invalid  parents? 
The  time  comes  when  we  have  learned  to  understand 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    195 

the  music  of  sorrow,  the  beauty  of  resigned  suffering, 
the  holy  light  that  plays  over  the  pillow  of  those  who 
die  before  their  time,  in  humble  hope  and  trust.  But 
it  is  not  until  he  has  worked  his  way  through  the 
period  of  honest  hearty  animal  existence,  which  every 
robust  child  should  make  the  most  of,  —  not  until  he 
has  learned  the  use  of  his  various  faculties,  which  is 
his  first  duty,  —  that  a  boy  of  courage  and  animal  vigor 
is  in  a  proper  state  to  read  these  tearful  records  of 
premature  decay.  I  have  no  doubt  that  disgust  is  im 
planted  in  the  minds  of  many  healthy  children  by  early 
surfeits  of  pathological  piety.  I  do -verily  believe 
that  He  who  took  children  in  His  arms  and  blessed 
them  loved  the  healthiest  and  most  playful  of  them 
just  as  well  as  those  who  were  richest  in  the  tubercu 
lous  virtues.  I  know  what  I  am  talking  about,  and 
there  are  more  parents  in  this  country  who  will  be 
willing  to  listen  to  what  I  say  than  there  are  fools  to 
pick  a  quarrel  with  me.  In  the  sensibility  and  the 
sanctity  which  often  accompany  premature  decay  I  see 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  instances  of  the  principle  of 
compensation  which  marks  the  Divine  benevolence. 
But  to  get  the  spiritual  hygiene  of  robust  natures  out 
of  the  exceptional  regimen  of  invalids  is  just  simply 
what  we  Professors  call  "bad  practice";  and  I  know 
by  experience  that  there  are  worthy  people  who  not 
only  try  it  on  their  own  children,  but  actually  force 
it  on  those  of  their  neighbors. 

—  Having  been  photographed,  and  stereographed, 
and  chromatographed,  or  done  in  colors,  it  only  re 
mained  to  be  phrenologized.  A  polite  note  from 
Messrs.  Bumpus  and  Crane,  requesting  our  attend 
ance  at  their  Physiological  Emporium,  was  too  tempt 
ing  to  be  resisted.  We  repaired  to  that  scientific- 
Golgotha. 


196   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Messrs.  Bumpus  and  Crane  are  arranged  on  the 
plan  of  the  man  and  the  woman  in  the  toy  called 
a  "weather-house,"  both  on  the  same  wooden  arm 
suspended  on  a  pivot,  —  so  that  when  one  comes  to 
the  door,  the  other  retires  backwards,  and  vice  versa. 
The  more  particular  speciality  of  one  is  to  lubricate 
your  entrance  and  exit,  —  that  of  the  other  to  polish 
you  off  phrenologically  in  the  recesses  of  the  establish 
ment.  Suppose  yourself  in  a  room  full  of  casts  and 
pictures,  before  a  counterful  of  books  with  taking 
titles.  I  wonder  if  the  picture  of  the  brain  is  there, 
"approved"  by  a  noted  Phrenologist,  which  was 
copied  from  my,  the  Professor's,  folio  plate  in  the 
work  of  Gall  and  Spurzheim.  An  extra  convolution, 
No.  9,  Destructiveness,  according  to  the  list  beneath, 
which  was  not  to  be  seen  in  the  plate,  itself  a  copy  of 
Nature,  was  very  liberally  supplied  by  the  artist,  to 
meet  the  wants  of  the  catalogue  of  "organs."  Pro 
fessor  Bumpus  is  seated  in  front  of  a  row  of  women, 
—  horn-combers  and  gold-beaders,  or  somewhere 
about  that  range  of  life,  —  looking  so  credulous,  that, 
if  any  Second- Advent  Miller  or  Joe  Smith  should 
come  along,  he  could  string  the  whole  lot  of  them  on 
his  cheapest  lie,  as  a  boy  strings  a  dozen  "shiners" 
on  a  stripped  twig  of  willow. 

The  Professor  (meaning  ourselves)  is  in  a  hurry, 
as  usual;  let  the  horn-combers  wait,  — he  shall  be 
bumped  without  inspecting  the  antechamber. 

Tape  round  the  head,  —  22  inches.  (Come  on,  old 
23  inches,  if  you  think  you  are  the  better  man  !) 

Feels  thorax  and  arm,  and  nuzzles  round  among 
muscles  as  those  horrid  old  women  poke  their  fingers 
into  the  salt-meat  on  the  provision-stalls  at  the  Quincy 
Market.  Vitality,  No.  5  or  6,  or  something  or 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    197 

other.  Victuallty,  (organ  at  epigastrium,)  some 
other  number  equally  significant. 

Mild  champooing  of  head  now  commences.  Ex 
traordinary  revelations  !  Cupidiphilous,  6 !  Hymeni- 
philous,  6  +  !  Paediphilous,  5 !  Deipniphilous,  6 ! 
Gelasmiphilous,  6!  Musikiphilous,  5!  Uraniphi- 
lous,  5 !  Glossiphilous,  8 ! !  and  so  on.  Meant  for 
a  linguist.  —  Invaluable  information.  Will  invest 
in  grammars  and  dictionaries  immediately.  —  I  have 
nothing  against  the  grand  total  of  my  phrenological 
endowments. 

I  never  set  great  store  by  my  head,  and  did  not 
think  Messrs.  Bumpus  and  Crane  would  give  me  so 
good  a  lot  of  organs  as  they  did,  especially  consider 
ing  that  I  was  a  dead-head  on  that  occasion.  Much 
obliged  to  them  for  their  politeness.  They  have  been 
useful  in  their  way  by  calling  attention  to  important 
physiological  facts.  (This  concession  is  due  to  our 
immense  bump  of  Candor.) 

A  short  Lecture  on  Phrenology,  read  to  the  Boarders 
at  our  Breakfast-  Table. 

I  shall  begin,  my  friends,  with  the  definition  of  a 
Pseudo-science.  A  Pseudo-science  consists  of  a  no 
menclature,  with  a  self-adjusting  arrangement,  by 
which  all  positive  evidence,  or  such  as  favors  its  doc 
trines,  is  admitted,  and  all  negative  evidence,  or  such 
as  tells  against  it,  is  excluded.  It  is  invariably  con 
nected  with  some  lucrative  practical  application.  Its 
professors  and  practitioners  are  usually  shrewd  people ; 
they  are  very  serious  with  the  public,  but  wink  and 
laugh  a  good  deal  among  themselves.  The  believing 
multitude  consists  of  women  of  both  sexes,  feeble- 


198   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

minded  inquirers,  poetical  optimists,  people  who  al 
ways  get  cheated  in  buying  horses,  philanthropists 
who  insist  on  hurrying  up  the  millennium,  and  others 
of  this  class,  with  here  and  there  a  clergyman,  less 
frequently  a  lawyer,  very  rarely  a  physician,  and  al 
most  never  a  horse-jockey  or  a  member  of  the  detec 
tive  police.  —  I  do  not  say  that  Phrenology  was  one 
of  the  Pseudo -sciences. 

A  Pseudo-science  does  not  necessarily  consist  wholly 
of  lies.  It  may  contain  many  truths,  and  even  valu 
able  ones.  The  rottenest  bank  starts  with  a  little 
specie.  It  puts  out  a  thousand  promises  to  pay  on 
the  strength  of  a  single  dollar,  but  the  dollar  is  very 
commonly  a  good  one.  The  practitioners  of  the  Pseu 
do-sciences  know  that  common  minds,  after  they  have 
been  baited  with  a  real  fact  or  two,  will  jump  at  the 
merest  rag  of  a  lie,  or  even  at  the  bare  hook.  When 
we  have  one  fact  found  us,  we  are  veiy  apt  to  supply 
the  next  out  of  our  own  imagination.  (How  many 
persons  can  read  Judges  xv.  16  correctly  the  first 
time?)  The  Pseudo-sciences  take  advantage  of  this. 
—  I  did  not  say  that  it  was  so  with  Phrenology. 

I  have  rarely  met  a  sensible  man  who  would  not 
allow  that  there  was  something  in  Phrenology.  A 
broad,  high  forehead,  it  is  commonly  agreed,  prom 
ises  intellect;  one  that  is  "villanous  low"  and  has  a 
huge  hind-head  back  of  it,  is  wont  to  mark  an  animal 
nature.  I  have  as  rarely  met  an  unbiassed  and  sen 
sible  man  who  really  believed  in  the  bumps.  It  is 
observed,  however,  that  persons  with  what  the  Phren 
ologists  call  "good  heads"  are  more  prone  than  others 
toward  plenary  belief  in  the  doctrine. 

It  is  so  hard  to  prove  a  negative,  that,  if  a  man 
should  assert  that  the  moon  was  in  truth  a  green 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    199 

cheese,  formed  by  the  coagulable  substance  of  the 
Milky  Way,  and  challenge  me  to  prove  the  contrary, 
I  might  be  puzzled.  But  if  he  offer  to  sell  me  a  ton 
of  this  lunar  cheese,  I  call  on  him  to  prove  the  truth  of 
the  caseous  nature  of  our  satellite,  before  I  purchase. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  prove  the  falsity  of  the  phren 
ological  statement.  It  is  only  necessary  to  show  that 
its  truth  is  not  proved,  and  cannot  be,  by  the  common 
course  of  argument.  The  walls  of  the  head  are 
double,  with  a  great  air-chamber  between  them,  over 
the  smallest  and  most  closely  crowded  "organs."  Can 
you  tell  how  much  money  there  is  in  a  safe,  which  also 
has  thick  double  walls,  by  kneading  its  knobs  with 
your  fingers  ?  So  when  a  man  fumbles  about  my  fore 
head,  and  talks  about  the  organs  of  Individuality, 
Size,  etc.,  I  trust  him  as  much  as  I  should  if  he  felt  of 
the  outside  of  my  strong-box  and  told  me  that  there 
was  a  five-dollar  or  a  ten-dollar-bill  under  this  or  that 
particular  rivet.  Perhaps  there  is;  only  he  doesn't 
know  anything  about  it.  But  this  is  a  point  that  I, 
the  Professor,  understand,  my  friends,  or  ought  to, 
certainly,  better  than  you  do.  The  next  argument 
you  will  all  appreciate. 

I  proceed,  therefore,  to  explain  the  self-adjusting 
mechanism  of  Phrenology,  which  is  very  similar  to 
that  of  the  Pseudo-sciences.  An  example  will  show 
it  most  conveniently. 

A.  is  a  notorious  thief.  Messrs.  Bumpus  and 
Crane  examine  him  and  find  a  good-sized  organ  of 
Acquisitiveness.  Positive  fact  for  Phrenology. 
Casts  and  drawings  of  A.  are  multiplied,  and  the 
bump  does  not  lose  in  the  act  of  copying.  —  I  did  not 
say  it  gained.  —  What  do  you  look  so  for  ?  (to  the 
boarders.) 


200    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Presently  B.  turns  up,  a  bigger  thief  than  A.  But 
B.  has  no  bump  at  all  over  Acquisitiveness.  Nega 
tive  fact ;  goes  against  Phrenology.  —  Not  a  bit  of  it. 
Don't  you  see  how  small  Conscientiousness  is? 
That 's  the  reason  B.  stole. 

And  then  conies  C.,  ten  tunes  as  much  a  thief  as 
either  A.  or  B.,  — used  to  steal  before  he  was  weaned, 
and  would  pick  one  of  his  own  pockets  and  put  its 
contents  in  another,  if  he  could  find  no  other  way  of 
committing  petty  larceny.  Unfortunately,  C.  has  a 
hollow,  instead  of  a  bump,  over  Acquisitiveness.  Ah, 
but  just  look  and  see  what  a  bump  of  Alimentiveness ! 
Did  not  C.  buy  nuts  and  gingerbread,  when  a  boy, 
with  the  money  he  stole?  Of  course  you  see  why  he 
is  a  thief,  and  how  his  example  confirms  our  noble 
science. 

At  last  comes  along  a  case  which  is  apparently  a 
settler,  for  there  is  a  little  brain  with  vast  and  varied 
powers,  —  a  case  like  that  of  Byron,  for  instance. 
Then  comes  out  the  grand  reserve-reason  which  cov 
ers  everything  and  renders  it  simply  impossible  ever 
to  corner  a  Phrenologist.  "It  is  not  the  size  alone, 
but  the  quality  of  an  organ,  which  determines  its 
degree  of  power." 

Oh !  oh !  I  see.  —  The  argument  may  be  briefly 
stated  thus  by  the  Phrenologist:  "Heads  I  win,  tails 
you  lose."  Well,  that 's  convenient. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  Phrenology  has  a  certain 
resemblance  to  the  Pseudo-sciences.  I  did  not  say  it 
was  a  Pseudo-science. 

I  have  often  met  persons  who  have  been  altogether 
struck  up  and  amazed  at  the  accuracy  with  which 
some  wandering  Professor  of  Phrenology  had  read 
their  characters  written  upon  their  skulls.  Of  course 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    201 

the  Professor  acquires  his  information  solely  through 
his  cranial  inspections  and  manipulations.  —  What 
are  you  laughing  at?  (to  the  boarders.)  —  But  let  us 
just  suppose,  for  a  moment,  that  a  tolerably  cunning 
fellow,  who  did  not  know  or  care  anything  about 
Phrenology,  should  open  a  shop  and  undertake  to  read 
off  people's  characters  at  fifty  cents  or  a  dollar  apiece. 
Let  us  see  how  well  he  could  get  along  without  the 
"organs." 

I  will  suppose  myself  to  set  up  such  a  shop.  I 
would  invest  one  hundred  dollars,  more  or  less,  in 
casts  of  brains,  skulls,  charts,  and  other  matters  that 
would  make  the  most  show  for  the  money.  That 
would  do  to  begin  with.  I  would  then  advertise  my 
self  as  the  celebrated  Professor  Brainey,  or  whatever 
name  I  might  choose,  and  wait  for  my  first  customer. 
My  first  customer  is  a  middle-aged  man.  I  look  at 
him,  —  ask  him  a  question  or  two,  so  as  to  hear  him 
talk.  When  I  have  got  the  hang  of  him,  I  ask  him 
to  sit  down,  and  proceed  to  fumble  his  skull,  dictating 
as  follows :  — 

SCALE  FROM  1  TO  10. 

LIST  OF  FACULTIES  FOB  PRIVATE  NOTES  FOR  MY 

CUSTOMER.  PUPIL. 

Each  to  be  accompanied  with 
a  wink. 

Amativeness,  7.  Most  men  love  the  conflicting 

sex,  and  all  men  love  to  be  told 
they  do. 

A  limentiveness,  8.  Don't  you  see  that  he  has  burst 

off  his  lowest  waistcoat-button 
with  feeding,  —  hey  ? 

Acquisitiveness,  8.  Of  course.  A  middle-aged 

Yankee. 


202    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Approbativeness,  7  -(-.  Hat  well  brushed.    Hair  ditto. 

Mark  the  effect  of  that  plus  sign. 

Self-este&n,  6.  His  face  shows  that. 

Benevolence,  9.  That  '11  please  him. 

Conscientiousness,  8^.  That  fraction  looks  first-rate. 

Mirthfulness,  7.  Has  laughed  twice  since   he 

came  in. 

Ideality,  9.  That  sounds  well. 

Form,  Size,  Weight,  Color,  Lo-  >       4    to    6.     Average     every- 
cality,  Eventuality,  etc.,  etc.,     )  thing  that  can't  be  guessed. 

And  so  of  the  other  faculties. 

Of  course,  you  know,  that  is  n't  the  way  the  Phren 
ologists  do.  They  go  only  by  the  bumps.  —  What  do 
you  keep  laughing  so  for?  (to  the  boarders.)  I  only 
said  that  is  the  way  /should  practise  "Phrenology" 
for  a  living. 

End  of  my  Lecture. 

—  The  Reformers  have  good  heads,  generally. 
Their  faces  are  commonly  serene  enough,  and  they 
are  lambs  in  private  intercourse,  even  though  their 
voices  may  be  like 

The  wolf's  long  howl  from  Oonalaska's  shore, 
when   heard  from  the  platform.     Their  greatest  spir 
itual  danger  is  from  the  perpetual  flattery  of  abuse  to 
which  they  are   exposed.     These  lines  are  meant  to 
caution  them. 

SAINT  ANTHONY  THE  REFORMER. 

HIS   TEMPTATION. 

No  fear  lest  praise  should  make  us  proud  ! 

We  know  how  cheaply  that  is  won  ; 
The  idle  homage  of  the  crowd 

Is  proof  of  tasks  as  idly  done. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    203 

A  surface-smile  may  pay  the  toil 

That  follows  still  the  conquering  Right, 

With  soft,  white  hands  to  dress  the  spoil 
That  sunbrowned  valor  clutched  in  fight. 

Sing  the  sweet  song  of  other  days, 

Serenely  placid,  safely  true, 
And  o'er  the  present's  parching  ways 

Thy  verse  distils  like  evening  dew. 

But  speak  in  words  of  living  power,  — 

They  fall  like  drops  of  scalding  ram 
That  plashed  before  the  burning  shower 

Swept  o'er  the  cities  of  the  plain  1 

Then  scowling  Hate  turns  deadly  pale,  — 
Then  Passion's  half-coiled  adders  spring, 

And,  smitten  through  their  leprous  mail, 
Strike  right  and  left  in  hope  to  sting. 

If  thou,  unmoved  by  poisoning  wrath, 

Thy  feet  on  earth,  thy  heart  above, 
Canst  walk  in  peace  thy  kingly  path, 

Unchanged  in  trust,  unchilled  in  love,  — • 

Too  kind  for  bitter  words  to  grieve, 

Too  firm  for  clamor  to  dismay, 
When  Faith  forbids  thee  to  believe, 

And  Meekness  calls  to  disobey,  — 

Ah,  then  beware  of  mortal  pride  ! 

The  smiling  pride  that  calmly  scorns 
Those  foolish  fingers,  crimson  dyed 
In  laboring  on  thy  crown  of  thorns  ! 


IX. 

One  of  our  boarders  —  perhaps  more  than  one  was 
concerned  in  it  —  sent  in  some  questions  to  me,  the 


204   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

other  day,  which,  trivial  as  some  of  them  are,  I  felt 
bound  to  answer. 

1. — Whether  a  lady  was  ever  known  to  write  a 
letter  covering  only  a  single  page? 

To  this  I  answered,  that  there  was  a  case  on  record 
where  a  lady  had  but  half  a  sheet  of  paper  and  110 
envelope;  and  being  obliged  to  send  through  the 
post-office,  she  covered  only  one  side  of  the  paper 
(crosswise,  lengthwise,  and  diagonally). 

2.  — What  constitutes  a  man  a  gentleman? 

To  this  I  gave  several  answers,  adapted  to  particu 
lar  classes  of  questioners. 

a.  Not  trying  to  be  a  gentleman. 

b.  Self-respect  underlying  courtesy. 

c.  Knowledge    and  observance    of    the  fitness   of 
things  in  social  intercourse. 

d.  <£.  s.  d.  (as  many  suppose.) 

3.  —  Whether  face  or  figure  is  most  attractive  in 
the  female  sex? 

Answered  in  the  following  epigram,  by  a  young 
man  about  town :  — 

Quoth  Tom,  "  Though  fair  her  features  be, 

It  is  her  figure  pleases  me." 
"  What  may  her  figure  be  ?  "  I  cried. 
"  One  hundred  thousand  !  "  he  replied. 

When  this  was  read  to  the  boarders,  the  young  man 
John  said  he  should  like  a  chance  to  "step  up"  to  a 
figger  of  that  kind,  if  the  girl  was  one  of  the  right 
sort. 

The  landlady  said  them  that  merried  for  money 
didn't  deserve  the  blessin'  of  a  good  wife.  Money 
was  a  great  thing  when  them  that  had  it  made  a  good 
use  of  it.  She  had  seen  better  days  herself,  and 
knew  what  it  was  never  to  want  for  anything.  One 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    205 

of  her  cousins  merried  a  very  rich  old  gentleman,  and 
she  had  heerd  that  he  said  he  lived  ten  year  longer 
than  if  he  'd  staid  by  himself  without  anybody  to  take 
care  of  him.  There  was  nothin'  like  a  wife  for  nus- 
sin'  sick  folks  and  them  that  couldn't  take  care  of 
themselves. 

The  young  man  John  got  off  a  little  wink,  and 
pointed  slyly  with  his  thumb  in  the  direction  of  our 
diminutive  friend,  for  whom  he  seemed  to  think  this 
speech  was  intended. 

If  it  was  meant  for  him,  he  did  n't  appear  to  know 
that  it  was.  Indeed,  he  seems  somewhat  listless  of 
late,  except  when  the  conversation  falls  upon  one  of 
those  larger  topics  that  specially  interest  him,  and 
then  he  grows  excited,  speaks  loud  and  fast,  some 
times  almost  savagely,  —  and,  I  have  noticed  once  or 
twice,  presses  his  left  hand  to  his  right  side,  as  if  there 
were  something  that  ached,  or  weighed,  or  throbbed 
in  that  region. 

While  he  speaks  in  this  way,  the  general  conversa 
tion  is  interrupted,  and  we  all  listen  to  him.  Iris 
looks  steadily  in  his  face,  and  then  he  will  turn  as  if 
magnetized  and  meet  the  amber  eyes  with  his  own 
melancholy  gaze.  I  do  believe  that  they  have  some 
kind  of  understanding  together,  that  they  meet  else 
where  than  at  our  table,  and  that  there  is  a  mystery, 
which  is  going  to  break  upon  us  all  of  a  sudden,  in 
volving  the  relations  of  these  two  persons.  From  the 
very  first,  they  have  taken  to  each  other.  The  one 
thing  they  have  in  common  is  the  heroic  will.  In 
him,  it  shows  itself  in  thinking  his  way  straightfor 
ward,  in  doing  battle  for  "free  trade  and  no  right  of 
search ' '  on  the  high  seas  of  religious  controversy,  and 
especially  in  fighting  the  battles  of  his  crooked  old 


206  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

city.  In  her,  it  is  standing  up  for  her  little  friend 
with  the  most  queenly  disregard  of  the  code  of  board 
ing-house  etiquette.  People  may  say  or  look  what 
they  like,  —  she  will  have  her  way  about  this  sentiment 
of  hers. 

The  Poor  Relation  is  in  a  dreadful  fidget  whenever 
the  Little  Gentleman  says  anything  that  interferes 
with  her  own  infallibility.  She  seems  to  think  Faith 
must  go  with  her  face  tied  up,  as  if  she  had  the  tooth 
ache,  —  and  that  if  she  opens  her  mouth  to  the  quar 
ter  the  wind  blows  from,  she  will  catch  her  "death  o' 
cold." 

The  landlady  herself  came  to  him  one  day,  as  I 
have  found  out,  and  tried  to  persuade  him  to  hold  his 
tongue. — The  boarders  was  gettin'  uneasy, — she 
said,  —  and  some  of  'em  would  go,  she  mistrusted,  if 
he  talked  any  more  about  things  that  belonged  to  the 
ministers  to  settle.  She  was  a  poor  woman,  that  had 
known  better  days,  but  all  her  livin'  depended  on  her 
boarders,  and  she  was  sure  there  was  n't  any  of  'em 
she  set  so  much  by  as  she  did  by  him;  but  there  was 
them  that  never  liked  to  hear  about  sech  things - 
except  on  Sundays. 

The  Little  Gentleman  looked  very  smiling  at  the 
landlady,  who  smiled  even  more  cordially  in  return, 
and  adjusted  her  cap-ribbon  with  an  unconscious 
movement,  —  a  reminiscence  of  the  long-past  pairing- 
time,  when  she  had  smoothed  her  locks  and  softened 
her  voice,  and  won  her  mate  by  these  and  other  bird- 
like  graces. — My  dear  Madam, — he  said, — I  will 
remember  your  interests,  and  speak  only  of  matters 
to  which  I  am  totally  indifferent.  — I  don't  doubt  he 
meant  this;  but  a  day  or  two  after,  something  stirred 
him  up,  and  I  heard  his  voice  uttering  itself  aloud, 
thus:  — 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    207 

—  It  must  be  done,  Sir !  —  he  was  saying,  —  it  must 
be  done!     Our   religion   has   been  Judaized,  it  has 
been  Romanized,  it  has  been  Orientalized,  it  has  been 
Anglicized,  and  the  time  is  at  hand  when  it  must  be 
AMERICANIZED  !     Now,  Sir,  you  see  what  American 
izing  is  in  politics ;  —  it  means  that  a  man  shall  have 
a  vote   because   he  is   a  man,  —  and   shall  vote   for 
whom  he  pleases,  without  his  neighbor's  interference. 
If  he  chooses  to  vote  for  the  Devil,  that  is  his  look 
out  ;  —  perhaps  he  thinks  the  Devil  is  better  than  the 
other  candidates;  and  I  don't  doubt  he  's  often  right, 
Sir.     Just  so  a  man's  soul  has  a  vote  in  the  spiritual 
community;  and  it  doesn't  do,  Sir,  or  it  won't  do 
long,  to  call  him   "schismatic"  and  "heretic"   and 
those  other  wicked  names  that  the  old  murderous  In 
quisitors  have  left  us  to  help  along  "peace  and  good 
will  to  men"! 

As  long  as  you  could  catch  a  man  and  drop  him 
into  an  oubliette,  or  pull  him  out  a  few  inches  longer 
by  machinery,  or  put  a  hot  iron  through  his  tongue, 
or  make  him  climb  up  a  ladder  and  sit  on  a  board  at 
the  top  of  a  stake  so  that  he  should  be  slowly  broiled 
by  the  fire  kindled  round  it,  there  was  some  sense  in 
these  words;  they  led  to  something.  But  since  we 
have  done  with  those  tools,  we  had  better  give  up 
those  words.  I  should  like  to  see  a  Yankee  advertise 
ment  like  this!  —  (the  Little  Gentleman  laughed 
fiercely  as  he  uttered  the  words,  — ) 

—  Patent  thumb-screws,  —  will  crush  the  bone  in 
three  turns. 

—  The  cast-iron  boot,  with  wedge  and  mallet,  — 
only  five  dollars! 

—  The    celebrated    extension-rack,    warranted    to 
stretch  a  man  six  inches  in  twenty  minutes,  —  money 
returned,  if  it  proves  unsatisfactory. 


208   THE  PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I  should  like  to  see  such  an  advertisement,  I  say, 
Sir!  Now,  what's  the  use  of  using  the  words  that 
belonged  with  the  thumb-screws,  and  the  Blessed 
Virgin  with  the  knives  under  her  petticoats  and 
sleeves  and  bodice,  and  the  dry  pan  and  gradual  fire, 
if  we  can't  have  the  things  themselves,  Sir?  What 's 
the  use  of  painting  the  fire  round  a  poor  fellow,  when 
you  think  it  won't  do  to  kindle  one  under  him, —  as 
they  did  at  Valencia  or  Valladolid,  or  wherever  it  was? 
-What  story  is  that?  —  I  said. 

Why, — he  answered, — at  the  last  auto-da-fe,  in 
1824  or  '5,  or  somewhere  there, — it's  a  traveller's 
story,  but  a  mighty  knowing  traveller  he  is,  —  they 
had  a  "heretic"  to  use  up  according  to  the  statutes 
provided  for  the  crime  of  private  opinion.  They 
could  n't  quite  make  up  their  minds  to  burn  him,  so 
they  only  hung  him  in  a  hogshead  painted  all  over 
with  flames ! 

No,  Sir !  when  a  man  calls  you  names  because  you 
go  to  the  ballot-box  and  vote  for  your  candidate,  or 
because  you  say  this  or  that  is  your  opinion,  he  for 
gets  in  which  half  of  the  world  he  was  born,  Sir! 
It  won't  be  long,  Sir,  before  we  have  Americanized 
religion  as  we  have  Americanized  government;  and 
then,  Sir,  every  soul  God  sends  into  the  world  will  be 
good  in  the  face  of  all  men  for  just  so  much  of  His 
"inspiration"  as  "giveth  him  understanding"!  — 
None  of  my  words,  Sir !  none  of  my  words ! 

—  If  Iris  does  not  love  this  Little  Gentleman,  what 
does  love  look  like  when  one  sees  it?  She  follows 
him  with  her  eyes,  she  leans  over  toward  him  when  he 
speaks,  her  face  changes  with  the  changes  of  his 
speech,  so  that  one  might  think  it  was  with  her  as 
with  Christabel,  — 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    209 

That  all  her  features  were  resigned 
To  this  sole  image  in  her  mind. 

But  she  never  looks  at  him  with  such  intensity  of 
devotion  as  when  he  says  anything  about  the  soul  and 
the  soul's  atmosphere,  religion. 

Women  are  twice  as  religious  as  men;  —  all  the 
world  knows  that.  Whether  they  are  any  better,  in 
the  eyes  of  Absolute  Justice,  might  be  questioned ;  for 
the  additional  religious  element  supplied  by  sex  hardly 
seems  to  be  a  matter  of  praise  or  blame.  But  in  all 
common  aspects  they  are  so  much  above  us  that  we 
get  most  of  our  religion  from  them,  —  from  their 
teachings,  from  their  example,  —  above  all,  from  their 
pure  affections. 

Now  this  poor  little  Iris  had  been  talked  to 
strangely  in  her  childhood.  Especially  she  had  been 
told  that  she  hated  all  good  things,  —  which  every  sen 
sible  parent  knows  well  enough  is  not  true  of  a  great 
many  children,  to  say  the  least.  I  have  sometimes 
questioned  whether  many  libels  on  human  nature  had 
not  been  a  natural  consequence  of  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy,  which  was  enforced  for  so  long  a  period. 

The  child  had  met  this  and  some  other  equally 
encouraging  statements  as  to  her  spiritual  conditions, 
early  in  life,  and  fought  the  battle  of  spiritual  inde 
pendence  prematurely,  as  many  children  do.  If  all 
she  did  was  hateful  to  God,  what  was  the  meaning 
of  the  approving  or  else  the  disapproving  conscience, 
when  she  had  done  "  right "  or  "  wrong  "  ?  No  "  shoul 
der-striker  "  hits  out  straighter  than  a  child  with  its 
logic.  Why,  I  can  remember  lying  in  my  bed  in  the 
nursery  and  settling  questions  which  all  that  I  have 
heard  since  and  got  out  of  books  has  never  been  able 
to  raise  again.  If  a  child  does  not  assert  itself  in  this 


210   THE   PEOFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

way  in  good  season,  it  becomes  just  what  its  parents 
or  teachers  were,  and  is  no  better  than  a  plastic 
image. — How  old  was  I  at  the  time?  —  I  suppose 
about  5823  years  old,  —  that  is,  counting  from  Arch 
bishop  Usher's  date  of  the  Creation,  and  adding  the 
life  of  the  race,  whose  accumulated  intelligence  is  a 
part  of  my  inheritance,  to  my  own.  A  good  deal 
older  than  Plato,  you  see,  and  much  more  experienced 
than  my  Lord  Bacon  and  most  of  the  world's  teachers. 
—  Old  books,  as  you  well  know,  are  books  of  the 
world's  youth,  and  new  books  are  fruits  of  its  age. 
How  many  of  all  these  ancient  folios  round  me  are 
like  so  many  old  cupels !  The  gold  has  passed  out  of 
them  long  ago,  but  their  pores  are  full  of  the  dross 
with  which  it  was  mingled. 

And  so  Iris  —  having  thrown  off  that  first  lasso 
which  not  only  fetters,  but  chokes  those  whom  it  can 
hold,  so  that  they  give  themselves  up  trembling  and 
breathless  to  the  great  soul-subduer,  who  has  theni  by 
the  windpipe  —  had  settled  a  brief  creed  for  herself, 
in  which  love  of  the  neighbor,  whom  we  have  seen, 
was  the  first  article,  and  love  of  the  Creator,  whom 
we  have  not  seen,  grew  out  of  this  as  its  natural  de 
velopment,  being  necessarily  second  in  order  of  time 
to  the  first  unselfish  emotions  which  we  feel  for  the 
fellow-creatures  who  surround  us  in  our  early  years. 

The  child  must  have  some  place  of  worship.  What 
would  a  young  girl  be  who  never  mingled  her  voice 
with  the  songs  and  prayers  that  rose  all  around  her 
with  every  returning  day  of  rest?  And  Iris  was  free 
to  choose.  Sometimes  one  and  sometimes  another 
would  offer  to  carry  her  to  this  or  that  place  of  wor 
ship;  and  when  the  doors  were  hospitably  opened, 
she  would  often  go  meekly  in  by  herself.  It  was  a 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    211 

curious  fact,  that  two  churches  as  remote  from  each 
other  in  doctrine  as  could  well  be  divided  her  affec 
tions. 

The  Church  of  Saint  Polycarp  had  very  much  the 
look  of  a  Roman  Catholic  chapel.  I  do  not  wish  to 
run  the  risk  of  giving  names  to  the  ecclesiastical  fur 
niture  which  gave  it  such  a  Romish  aspect;  but  there 
were  pictures,  and  inscriptions  in  antiquated  charac 
ters,  and  there  were  reading-stands,  and  flowers  on 
the  altar,  and  other  elegant  arrangements.  Then 
there  were  boys  to  sing  alternately  in  choirs  respon 
sive  to  each  other,  and  there  was  much  bowing,  with 
very  loud  responding,  and  a  long  service  and  a  short 
sermon,  and  a  bag,  such  as  Judas  used  to  hold  in  the 
old  pictures,  was  carried  round  to  receive  contribu 
tions.  Everything  was  done  not  only  "decently  and 
in  order,"  but,  perhaps  one  might  say,  with  a  certain 
air  of  magnifying  their  office  on  the  part  of  the  dig 
nified  clergymen,  often  two  or  three  in  number. 
The  music  and  the  free  welcome  were  grateful  to  Iris, 
and  she  forgot  her  prejudices  at  the  door  of  the  chapel. 
For  this  was  a  church  with  open  doors,  with  seats  for 
all  classes  and  all  colors  alike,  —  a  church  of  zealous 
worshippers  after  their  faith,  of  charitable  and  ser 
viceable  men  and  women,  one  that  took  care  of  its 
children  and  never  forgot  its  poor,  and  whose  people 
were  much  more  occupied  in  looking  out  for  their  own 
souls  than  in  attacking  the  faith  of  their  neighbors. 
In  its  mode  of  worship  there  was  a  union  of  two  qual 
ities,  —  the  taste  and  refinement,  which  the  educated 
require  just  as  much  in  their  churches  as  elsewhere, 
and  the  air  of  stateliness,  almost  of  pomp,  which  im 
presses  the  common  worshipper,  and  is  often  not  with 
out  its  effect  upon  those  who  think  they  hold  outward 


212    THE    PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

forms  as  of  little  value.  Under  the  half -Romish  as 
pect  of  the  Church  of  Saint  Polycarp,  the  young  girl 
found  a  devout  and  loving  and  singularly  cheerful 
religious  spirit.  The  artistic  sense,  which  betrayed 
itself  in  the  dramatic  proprieties  of  its  ritual,  harmo 
nized  with  her  taste.  The  mingled  murmur  of  the 
loud  responses,  in  those  rhythmic  phrases,  so  simple, 
yet  so  fervent,  almost  as  if  every  tenth  heart-beat, 
instead  of  its  dull  tic-tac,  articulated  itself  as  "  Good 
Lord,  deliver  us!  "  — the  sweet  alternation  of  the  two 
choirs,  as  their  holy  song  floated  from  side  to  side,  — 
the  keen  young  voices  rising  like  a  flight  of  singing- 
birds  that  passes  from  one  grove  to  another,  carrying 
its  music  with  it  back  and  forward,  —  why  should  she 
not  love  these  gracious  outward  signs  of  those  inner 
harmonies  which  none  could  deny  made  beautiful  the 
lives  of  many  of  her  fellow-worshippers  in  the  humble, 
yet  not  inelegant  Chapel  of  Saint  Polycarp? 

The  young  Marylander,  who  was  born  and  bred 
to  that  mode  of  worship,  had  introduced  her  to  the 
chapel,  for  which  he  did  the  honors  for  such  of  our 
boarders  as  were  not  otherwise  provided  for.  I  saw 
them  looking  over  the  same  prayer-book  one  Sunday, 
and  I  could  not  help  thinking  that  two  such  young 
and  handsome  persons  could  hardly  worship  together 
in  safety  for  a  great  while.  But  they  seemed  to  mind 
nothing  but  their  prayer-book.  By-and-by  the  silken 
bag  was  handed  round.  —  I  don't  believe  she  will ;  — 
so  awkward,  you  know ;  —  besides,  she  only  came  by 
invitation.  There  she  is,  with  her  hand  in  her  pocket, 
though,  —  and  sure  enough,  her  little  bit  of  silver  tin 
kled  as  it  struck  the  coin  beneath.  God  bless  her ! 
she  has  n't  much  to  give;  but  her  eye  glistens  when 
she  gives  it,  and  that  is  all  Heaven  asks.  —  That  was 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    213 

the  first  time  I  noticed  these  young  people  together, 
and  I  am  sure  they  behaved  with  the  most  charming 
propriety,  —  in  fact,  there  was  one  of  our  silent  lady- 
boarders  with  them,  whose  eyes  would  have  kept  Cu 
pid  and  Psyche  to  their  good  behavior.  A  day  or 
two  after  this  I  noticed  that  the  young  gentleman  had 
left  his  seat,  which  you  may  remember  was  at  the  cor 
ner  diagonal  to  that  of  Iris,  so  that  they  have  been  as 
far  removed  from  each  other  as  they  could  be  at  the 
table.  His  new  seat  is  three  or  four  places  farther 
down  the  table.  Of  course  I  made  a  romance  out  of 
this,  at  once.  So  stupid  not  to  see  it !  How  could  it 
be  otherwise?  —  Did  you  speak,  Madam?  I  beg  your 
pardon.  (To  my  lady-reader.) 

I  never  saw  anything  like  the  tenderness  with  which 
this  young  girl  treats  her  little  deformed  neighbor. 
If  he  were  in  the  way  of  going  to  church,  I  know 
she  would  follow  him.  But  his  worship,  if  any,  is  not 
with  the  throng  of  men  and  women  and  staring  chil 
dren. 

I,  the  Professor,  on  the  other  hand,  am  a  regular 
church-goer.  I  should  go  for  various  reasons  if  I 
did  not  love  it;  but  I  am  happy  enough  to  find  great 
pleasure  in  the  midst  of  devout  multitudes,  whether 
I  can  accept  all  their  creeds  or  not.  One  place  of 
worship  comes  nearer  than  the  rest  to  my  ideal  stand 
ard,  and  to  this  it  was  that  I  carried  our  young  girl. 

The  Church  of  the  Galileans,  as  it  is  called,  is  even 
humbler  in  outside  pretensions  than  the  Church  of 
Saint  Polycarp.  Like  that,  it  is  open  to  all  comers. 
The  stranger  who  approaches  it  looks  down  a  quiet 
street  and  sees  the  plainest  of  chapels,  —  a  kind  of 
wooden  tent,  that  owes  whatever  grace  it  has  to  its 
pointed  windows  and  the  high,  sharp  roof,  —  traces, 


214   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

both,  of  that  upward  movement  of  ecclesiastical  archi 
tecture  which  soared  aloft  in  cathedral-spires,  shoot 
ing  into  the  sky  as  the  spike  of  a  flowering  aloe  from 
the  cluster  of  broad,  sharp-wedged  leaves  below. 
This  suggestion  of  mediaeval  symbolism,  aided  by  a 
minute  turret  in  which  a  hand-bell  might  have  hung 
and  found  just  room  enough  to  turn  over,  was  all  of 
outward  show  the  small  edifice  could  boast.  Within 
there  was  very  little  that  pretended  to  be  attractive. 
A  small  organ  at  one  side,  and  a  plain  pulpit,  showed 
that  the  building  was  a  church;  but  it  was  a  church 
reduced  to  its  simplest  expression. 

Yet  when  the  great  and  wise  monarch  of  the  East  sat 
upon  his  throne,  in  all  the  golden  blaze  of  the  spoils 
of  Ophir  and  the  freights  of  the  navy  of  Tarshish,  his 
glory  was  not  like  that  of  this  simple  chapel  in  its 
Sunday  garniture.  For  the  lilies  of  the  field,  in  their 
season,  and  the  fairest  flowers  of  the  year,  in  due  suc 
cession,  were  clustered  every  Sunday  morning  over  the 
preacher's  desk.  Slight,  thin-tissued  blossoms  of  pink 
and  blue  and  virgin  white  in  early  spring,  then  the 
full-breasted  and  deep-hearted  roses  of  summer,  then 
the  velvet-robed  crimson  and  yellow  flowers  of  autumn, 
and  in  the  winter  delicate  exotics  that  grew  under 
skies  of  glass  in  the  false  summers  of  our  crystal  pal 
aces  without  knowing  that  it  was  the  dreadful  winter 
of  New  England  which  was  rattling  the  doors  and 
frosting  the  panes,  —  in  their  language  the  whole  year 
told  its  history  of  life  and  growth  and  beauty  from 
that  simple  desk.  There  was  always  at  least  one  good 
sermon,  —  this  floral  homily.  There  was  at  least  one 
good  prayer,  —  that  brief  space  wrhen  all  were  silent, 
after  the  manner  of  the  Friends  at  their  devotions. 

Here,  too,  Iris  found  an  atmosphere  of  peace  and 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    215 

love.  The  same  gentle,  thoughtful  faces,  the  same 
cheerful  but  reverential  spirit,  the  same  quiet,  the 
same  life  of  active  benevolence.  But  in  all  else  how 
different  from  the  Church  of  Saint  Polycarp!  No 
clerical  costume,  no  ceremonial  forms,  no  carefully 
trained  choirs.  A  liturgy  they  have,  to  be  sure,  which 
does  not  scruple  to  borrow  from  the  time-honored 
manuals  of  devotion,  but  also  does  not  hesitate  to 
change  its  expressions  to  its  own  liking. 

Perhaps  the  good  people  seem  a  little  easy  with 
each  other;  —  they  are  apt  to  nod  familiarly,  and 
have  even  been  known  to  whisper  before  the  minister 
came  in.  But  it  is  a  relief  to  get  rid  of  that  old  Sun 
day  —  no,  —  Sabbath  face,  which  suggests  the  idea 
that  the  first  day  of  the  week  is  commemorative  of 
some  most  mournful  event.  The  truth  is,  these 
brethren  and  sisters  meet  very  much  as  a  family  does 
for  its  devotions,  not  putting  off  their  humanity  in  the 
least,  considering  it  on  the  whole  quite  a  delightful 
matter  to  come  together  for  prayer  and  song  and  good 
counsel  from  kind  and  wise  lips.  And  if  they  are 
freer  in  their  demeanor  than  some  very  precise  con 
gregations,  they  have  not  the  air  of  a  worldly  set  of 
people.  Clearly  they  have  not  come  to  advertise  their 
tailors  and  milliners,  nor  for  the  sake  of  exchanging 
criticisms  on  the  literary  character  of  the  sermon  they 
may  hear.  There  is  no  restlessness  and  no  restraint 
among  these  quiet,  cheerful  worshippers.  One  thing 
that  keeps  them  calm  and  happy  during  the  season  so 
evidently  trying  to  many  congregations  is,  that  they 
join  very  generally  in  the  singing.  In  this  way  they 
get  rid  of  that  accumulated  nervous  force  which  es 
capes  in  all  sorts  of  fidgety  movements,  so  that  a  min 
ister  trying  to  keep  his  congregation  still  reminds  one 


216  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of  a  boy  with  his  hand  over  the  nose  of  a  pump  which 
another  boy  is  working,  —  this  spirting  impatience  of 
the  people  is  so  like  the  jets  that  find  their  way 
through  his  fingers,  and  the  grand  rush  out  at  the 
final  Amen !  has  such  a  wonderful  likeness  to  the  gush 
that  takes  place  when  the  boy  pulls  his  hand  away, 
with  immense  relief,  as  it  seems,  to  both  the  pump 
and  the  officiating  youngster. 

How  sweet  is  this  blending  of  all  voices  and  all 
hearts  in  one  common  song  of  praise!  Some  will 
sing  a  little  loud,  perhaps,  —  and  now  and  then  an 
impatient  chorister  will  get  a  syllable  or  two  in  ad 
vance,  or  an  enchanted  singer  so  lose  all  thought  of 
time  and  place  in  the  luxury  of  a  closing  cadence  that 
ae  holds  on  to  the  last  semi -breve  upon  his  private 
responsibility;  but  how  much  more  of  the  spirit  of 
the  old  Psalmist  in  the  music  of  these  imperfectly 
trained  voices  than  in  the  academic  niceties  of  the 
paid  performers  who  take  our  musical  worship  out  of 
our  hands ! 

I  am  of  the  opinion  that  the  creed  of  the  Church  of 
the  Galileans  is  not  laid  down  in  as  many  details  as 
that  of  the  Church  of  Saint  Polycarp.  Yet  I  sus 
pect,  if  one  of  the  good  people  from  each  of  those 
churches  had  met  over  the  bed  of  a  suffering  fellow- 
creature,  or  for  the  promotion  of  any  charitable  ob 
ject,  they  would  have  found  they  had  more  in  com 
mon  than  all  the  special  beliefs  or  want  of  beliefs  that 
separated  them  would  amount  to.  There  are  always 
many  who  believe  that  the  fruits  of  a  tree  afford  a 
better  test  of  its  condition  than  a  statement  of  the 
composts  with  which  it  is  dressed,  —  though  the  last 
has  its  meaning  and  importance,  no  doubt. 

Between  these  two  churches,  then,  our  young  Iris 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    217 

divides  her  affections.  But  I  doubt  if  she  listens  to 
the  preacher  at  either  with  more  devotion  than  she  does 
to  her  little  neighbor  when  he  talks  of  these  matters. 

What  does  he  believe?  In  the  first  place,  there  is 
some  deep-rooted  disquiet  lying  at  the  bottom  of  his 
soul,  which  makes  him  very  bitter  against  all  kinds  of 
usurpation  over  the  right  of  private  judgment.  Over 
this  seems  to  lie  a  certain  tenderness  for  humanity  in 
general,  bred  out  of  life-long  trial,  I  should  say,  but 
sharply  streaked  with  fiery  lines  of  wrath  at  various 
individual  acts  of  wrong,  especially  if  they  come  in 
an  ecclesiastical  shape,  and  recall  to  him  the  days 
when  his  mother's  great-grandmother  was  strangled 
on  Witch  Hill,  with  a  text  from  the  Old  Testament 
for  her  halter.  With  all  this,  he  has  a  boundless  be 
lief  in  the  future  of  this  experimental  hemisphere, 
and  especially  in  the  destiny  of  the  free  thought  of  its 
northeastern  metropolis. 

—  A  man  can  see  further,  Sir,  —  he  said  one  day, 
—  from  the  top  of  Boston  State  House,  and  see  more 
that  is  worth  seeing,  than  from  all  the  pyramids  and 
turrets  and  steeples  in  all  the  places  in  the  world! 
No  smoke,  Sir ;  no  fog,  Sir ;  and  a  clean  sweep  from 
the  Outer  Light  and  the  sea  beyond  it  to  the  New 
Hampshire  mountains !  Yes,  Sir,  —  and  there  are 
great  truths  that  are  higher  than  mountains  and 
broader  than  seas,  that  people  are  looking  for  from 
the  tops  of  these  hills  of  ours,  —  such  as  the  world 
never  saw,  though  it  might  have  seen  them  at  Jeru 
salem,  if  its  eyes  had  been  open !  —  Where  do  they 
have  most  crazy  people  ?  Tell  me  that,  Sir ! 

I  answered,  that  I  had  heard  it  said  there  were 
more  in  New  England  than  in  most  countries,  perhaps 
more  than  in  any  part  of  the  world. 


218   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Very  good,  Sir,  —  he  answered.  —  When  have 
there  been  most  people  killed  and  wounded  in  the 
course  of  this  century? 

During  the  wars  of  the  French  Empire,  no  doubt, 

—  I  said. 

That 's  it!  that 's  it!  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman; 

—  where  the  battle  of  intelligence  is  fought,  there  are 
most  minds  bruised  and  broken !     We  're  battling  for 
a  faith  here,  Sir. 

The  divinity-student  remarked,  that  it  was  rather 
late  in  the  world's  history  for  men  to  be  looking  out 
for  a  new  faith. 

I  didn't  say  a  new  faith,  — said  the  Little  Gentle 
man  ;  —  old  or  new,  it  can't  help  being  different  here 
in  this  American  mind  of  ours  from  anything  that 
ever  was  before;  the  people  are  new,  Sir,  and  that 
makes  the  difference.  One  load  of  corn  goes  to  the 
sty,  and  makes  the  fat  of  swine,  —  another  goes  to  the 
farm-house,  and  becomes  the  muscle  that  clothes  the 
right  arms  of  heroes.  It  is  n't  where  a  pawn  stands 
on  the  board  that  makes  the  difference,  but  what  the 
game  round  it  is  when  it  is  on  this  or  that  square. 

Can  any  man  look  round  and  see  what  Christian 
countries  are  now  doing,  and  how  they  are  governed, 
and  what  is  the  general  condition  of  society,  without 
seeing  that  Christianity  is  the  flag  under  which  the 
world  sails,  and  not  the  rudder  that  steers  its  course? 
No,  Sir!  There  was  a  great  raft  built  about  two 
thousand  years  ago,  —  call  it  an  ark,  rather,  —  the 
world's  great  ark!  big  enough  to  hold  all  mankind, 
and  made  to  be  launched  right  out  into  the  open 
waves  of  life,  —  and  here  it  has  been  lying,  one  end 
on  the  shore  and  one  end  bobbing  up  and  down  in  the 
water,  men  fighting  all  the  time  as  to  who  should  be 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    219 

captain  and  who  should  have  the  state-rooms,  and 
throwing  each  other  over  the  side  because  they  could 
not  agree  about  the  points  of  compass,  but  the  great 
vessel  never  getting  afloat  with  its  freight  of  nations 
and  their  rulers;  —  and  now,  Sir,  there  is  and  has 
been  for  this  long  time  a  fleet  of  "heretic"  lighters 
sailing  out  of  Boston  Bay,  and  they  have  been  saying, 
and  they  say  now,  and  they  mean  to  keep  saying, 
"  Pump  out  your  bilge-water,  shovel  over  your  loads 
of  idle  ballast,  get  out  your  old  rotten  cargo,  and  we 
will  carry  it  out  into  deep  waters  and  sink  it  where 
it  will  never  be  seen  again ;  so  shall  the  ark  of  the 
world's  hope  float  on  the  ocean,  instead  of  sticking  in 
the  dock-mud  where  it  is  lying!  " 

It 's  a  slow  business,  this  of  getting  the  ark  launched. 
The  Jordan  wasn't  deep  enough,  and  the  Tiber 
wasn't  deep  enough,  and  the  Rhone  wasn't  deep 
enough,  and  the  Thames  was  n't  deep  enough,  —  and 
perhaps  the  Charles  is  n't  deep  enough ;  but  I  don't 
feel  sure  of  that,  Sir,  and  I  love  to  hear  the  workmen 
knocking  at  the  old  blocks  of  tradition  and  making 
the  ways  smooth  with  the  oil  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 
I  don't  know,  Sir,  — but  I  do  think  she  stirs  a  little, 
—  I  do  believe  she  slides ;  —  and  when  I  think  of  what 
a  work  that  is  for  the  dear  old  three-breasted  mother 
of  American  liberty,  I  would  not  take  all  the  glory  of 
all  the  greatest  cities  in  the  world  for  my  birthright 
in  the  soil  of  little  Boston ! 

—  Some  of  us  could  not  help  smiling  at  this  burst 
of  local  patriotism,  especially  when  it  finished  with 
the  last  two  words. 

And  Iris  smiled,  too.  But  it  was  the  radiant  smile 
of  pleasure  which  always  lights  up  her  face  when  her 
little  neighbor  gets  excited  on  the  great  topics  of  pro- 


220  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

gress  in  freedom  and  religion,  and  especially  on  the 
part  which,  as  he  pleases  himself  with  believing,  hig 
own  city  is  to  take  in  that  consummation  of  human 
development  to  which  he  looks  forward. 

Presently  she  looked  into  his  face  with  a  changed 
expression,  —  the  anxiety  of  a  mother  that  sees  her 
child  suffering. 

You  are  not  well,  —  she  said. 

I  am  never  well, — he  answered. — His  eyes  fell 
mechanically  on  the  death's-head  ring  he  wore  on  his 
right  hand.  She  took  his  hand  as  if  it  had  been  a 
baby's,  and  turned  the  grim  device  so  that  it  should 
be  out  of  sight.  One  slight,  sad,  slow  movement  of 
the  head  seemed  to  say,  "The  death-symbol  is  still 
there!" 

A  very  odd  personage,  to  be  sure !  Seems  to  know 
what  is  going  on,  —  reads  books,  old  and  new,  —  has 
many  recent  publications  sent  him,  they  tell  me,  — 
but,  what  is  more  curious,  keeps  up  with  the  every 
day  affairs  of  the  world,  too.  Whether  he  hears 
everything  that  is  said  with  preternatural  acuteness, 
or  whether  some  confidential  friend  visits  him  in  a 
quiet  way,  is  more  than  I  can  tell.  I  can  make  no 
thing  more  of  the  noises  I  hear  in  his  room  than  my 
old  conjectures.  The  movements  I  mention  are  less 
frequent,  but  I  often  hear  the  plaintive  cry,  —  I  ob 
serve  that  it  is  rarely  laughing  of  late ;  —  I  never  have 
detected  one  articulate  word,  but  I  never  heard  such 
tones  from  anything  but  a  human  voice. 

There  has  been,  of  late,  a  deference  approaching  to 
tenderness,  on  the  part  of  the  boarders  generally  so 
far  as  he  is  concerned.  This  is  doubtless  owing  to 
the  air  of  suffering  which  seems  to  have  saddened  his 
look  of  late.  Either  some  passion  is  gnawing  at  him 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    221 

inwardly,  or  some  hidden  disease  is  at  work   upon 
him. 

—  What's  the  matter  with  Little  Boston?  —  said 
the  young  man  John  to  me  one  day.  —  There  a'n't 
much  of  him,  anyhow;  but  't  seems  to  me  he  looks 
peakeder  than  ever.     The  old  woman  says  he  's  in  a 
bad  way,    'n'    wants   a  nuss   to  take  care  of   him. 
Them  nusses  that  take  care  of  old  rich  folks  marry 
'em  sometimes,  —  'n'    they   don't   commonly  live   a 
great  while  after  that.     No,  Sir!     I  don't  see  what 
he  wants  to  die  for,  after  he  's  taken  so  much  trouble 
to  live  in  such  poor  accommodations  as  that  crooked 
body  of  his.     I   should  like  to  know  how  his  soul 
crawled  into  it,  'n'  how  it 's  goin'  to  get  out.     "What 
business  has  he  to  die,  I  should  like  to  know?     Let 
Ma'am  Allen  (the  gentleman  with  the  diamond)  die, 
if  he  likes,  and  be  (this  is  a. family-magazine);  but 
we  a'n't  goin'  to  have  him  dyin'.     Not  by  a  great 
sight.     Can't  do  without  him  anyhow.     A'n't  it  fun 
to  hear  him  blow  off  his  steam? 

I  believe  the  young  fellow  would  take  it  as  a  per 
sonal  insult,  if  the  Little  Gentleman  should  show  any 
symptoms  of  quitting  our  table  for  a  better  world. 

—  In  the  mean  time,  what  with  going  to  church  in 
company   vdth    our    young  lady,   and  taking  every 
chance  I  could  get  to  talk  with  her,  I  have  found  my 
self  becoming,  I  will  not  say  intimate,  but  well  ac 
quainted  with  Miss  Iris.     There  is  a  certain  frankness 
and  directness  about  her  that  perhaps  belong  to  her 
artist  nature.     For,  you  see,  the  one  thing  that  marks 
the  true  artist  is  a  clear  perception  and  a  firm,  bold 
hand,  in  distinction  from  that  imperfect  mental  vision 
and  uncertain  touch  which  give  us  the  feeble  pictures 
and  the  lumpy  statues  of  the  mere  artisans  on  canvas 


222   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

or  in  stone.  A  true  artist,  therefore,  can  hardly  fail 
to  have  a  sharp,  well-defined  mental  physiognomy. 
Besides  this,  many  young  girls  have  a  strange  auda 
city  blended  with  their  instinctive  delicacy.  Even  in 
physical  daring  many  of  them  are  a  match  for  boys ; 
whereas  you  will  find  few  among  mature  women,  and 
especially  if  they  are  mothers,  who  do  not  confess,  and 
not  unfrequently  proclaim,  their  timidity.  One  of 
these  young  girls,  as  many  ot  us  hereabouts  remember, 
climbed  to  the  top  of  a  jagged,  slippery  rock  lying  out 
in  the  waves,  —  an  ugly  height  to  get  up,  and  a  worse 
one  to  get  down,  even  for  a  bold  young  fellow  of  six 
teen.  Another  was  in  the  way  of  climbing  tall  trees 
for  crows'  nests,  —  and  crows  generally  know  about 
how  far  boys  can  "shin  up,"  and  set  their  household 
establishments  above  that  high-water  mark.  Still 
another  of  these  young  ladies  I  saw  for  the  first  time 
in  an  open  boat,  tossing  on  the  ocean  ground-swell,  a 
mile  or  two  from  shore,  off  a  lonely  island.  She  lost 
all  her  daring,  after  she  had  some  girls  of  her  own  to 
look  out  for. 

Many  blondes  are  very  gentle,  yielding  in  charac 
ter,  impressible,  unelastic.  But  the  positive  blondes, 
with  the  golden  tint  running  through  them,  are  often 
full  of  character.  They  come,  probably  enough,  from 
those  deep-bosomed  German  women  that  Tacitus  por 
trayed  in  such  strong  colors.  The  negative  blondes, 
or  those  women  whose  tints  have  faded  out  as  their 
line  of  descent  has  become  impoverished,  are  of  vari 
ous  blood,  and  in  them  the  soul  has  often  become  pale 
with  that  blanching  of  the  hair  and  loss  of  color  in 
the  eyes  which  makes  them  approach  the  character  of 
Albinesses. 

I  see  in  this  young  girl  that  union  of  strength  and 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.   223 

sensibility  which,  when  directed  and  impelled  by  the 
strong  instinct  so  apt  to  accompany  this  combination 
of  active  and  passive  capacity,  we  call  genius.  She 
is  not  an  accomplished  artist,  certainly,  as  yet;  but 
there  is  always  an  air  in  every  careless  figure  she 
draws,  as  it  were  of  upward  aspiration,  —  the  elan  of 
John  of  Bologna's  Mercury,  —  a  lift  to  them,  as  if 
they  had  on  winged  sandals,  like  the  herald  of  the 
Gods.  I  hear  her  singing  sometimes ;  and  though  she 
evidently  is  not  trained,  yet  is  there  a  wild  sweetness 
in  her  fitful  and  sometimes  fantastic  melodies,  —  such 
as  can  come  only  from  the  inspiration  of  the  moment, 
—  strangely  enough,  reminding  me  of  those  long  pas 
sages  I  have  heard  from  my  little  neighbor's  room, 
yet  of  different  tone,  and  by  no  means  to  be  mistaken 
for  those  weird  harmonies. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  deny  that  I  am  interested  in  the 
girl.  Alone,  unprotected,  as  I  have  seen  so  many 
young  girls  left  in  boarding-houses,  the  centre  of  all 
the  men's  eyes  that  surround  the  table,  watched  with 
jealous  sharpness  by  every  woman,  most  of  all  by  that 
poor  relation  of  our  landlady,  who  belongs  to  the  class 
of  women  that  like  to  catch  others  in  mischief  when 
they  themselves  are  too  mature  for  indiscretions,  (as 
one  sees  old  rogues  turn  to  thief -catchers,)  one  of  Na 
ture's  gendarmerie,  clad  in  a  complete  suit  of  wrin 
kles,  the  cheapest  coat-of-mail  against  the  shafts  of 
the  great  little  enemy,  —  so  surrounded,  Iris  spans 
this  commonplace  household-life  of  ours  with  her  arch 
of  beauty,  as  the  rainbow,  whose  name  she  borrows, 
looks  down  on  a  dreary  pasture  with  its  feeding  flocks 
and  herds  of  indifferent  animals. 

These  young  girls  that  live  in  boarding-houses  can 
do  pretty  much  as  they  will.  The  female  gendarmes 


224   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

are  off  guard  occasionally.  The  sitting-room  has  its 
solitary  moments,  when  any  two  boarders  who  wish  to 
meet  may  come  together  accidentally,  (accidentally,  I 
said,  Madam,  and  I  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of 
Italicizing  the  word,)  and  discuss  the  social  or  polit 
ical  questions  of  the  day,  or  any  other  subject  that 
may  prove  interesting.  Many  charming  conversations 
take  place  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  or  while  one  of  the 
parties  is  holding  the  latch  of  a  door,  —  in  the  shadow 
of  porticoes,  and  especially  on  those  outside  balconies 
which  some  of  our  Southern  neighbors  call  "stoops," 
the  most  charming  places  in  the  world  when  the  moon 
is  just  right  and  the  roses  and  honeysuckles  are  in  full 
blow,  —  as  we  used  to  think  in  eighteen  hundred  and 
never  mention  it. 

On  such  a  balcony  or  "stoop,"  one  evening,  I  walked 
with  Iris.  We  were  on  pretty  good  terms  now,  and 
I  had  coaxed  her  arm  under  mine,  —  my  left  arm,  of 
course.  That  leaves  one's  right  arm  free  to  defend 
the  lovely  creature,  if  the  rival  —  odious  wretch !  — 
attempt,  to  ravish  her  from  your  side.  Likewise  if 
one's  heart  should  happen  to  beat  a  little,  its  mute 
language  will  not  be  without  its  meaning,  as  you  will 
perceive  when  the  arm  you  hold  begins  to  tremble,  — 
a  circumstance  like  to  occur,  if  you  happen  to  be  a 
good-looking  young  fellow,  and  you  two  have  the 
"stoop"  to  yourselves. 

We  had  it  to  ourselves  that  evening.  The  Koh-i- 
noor,  as  we  called  him,  was  in  a  corner  with  our  land 
lady's  daughter.  The  young  fellow  John  was  smok 
ing  out  in  the  yard.  The  gendarme  was  afraid  of  the 
evening  air,  and  kept  inside.  The  young  Mary- 
lander  came  to  the  door,  looked  out  and  saw  us  walk 
ing  together,  gave  his  hat  a  pull  over  his  forehead  and 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    225 

stalked  off.  I  felt  a  slight  spasm,  as  it  were,  in  the 
arm  I  held,  and  saw  the  girl's  head  turn  over  her 
shoulder  for  a  second.  What  a  kind  creature  this  is ! 
She  has  no  special  interest  in  this  youth,  but  she  does 
not  like  to  see  a  young  fellow  going  off  because  he 
feels  as  if  he  were  not  wanted. 

She  had  her  locked  drawing-book  under  her  arm. 

—  Let  me  take  it,  —  I  said. 
She  gave  it  to  me  to  carry. 

This  is  full  of  caricatures  of  all  of  us,  I  am  sure, 

—  said  I. 

She  laughed,  and  said,  —  No,  —  not  all  of  you. 

I  was  there,  of  course? 

Why,  no,  —  she  had  never  taken  so  much  pains  with 
me. 

Then  she  would  let  me  see  the  inside  of  it? 

She  would  think  of  it. 

Just  as  we  parted,  she  took  a  little  key  from  her 
pocket  and  handed  it  to  me.  This  unlocks  my 
naughty  book,  —  she  said,  —  you  shall  see  it.  I  am 
not  afraid  of  you. 

I  don't  know  whether  the  last  words  exactly  pleased 
me.  At  any  rate,  I  took  the  book  and  hurried  with 
it  to  my  room.  I  opened  it,  and  saw,  in  a  few 
glances,  that  I  held  the  heart  of  Iris  in  my  hand. 

—  I  have  no  verses  for  you  this-  month,  except  these 
few  lines  suggested  by  the  season. 

MIDSUMMER. 

Here  !  sweep  these  foolish  leaves  away,  — 
I  will  not  crush  my  brains  to-day  !  — 
Look  !  are  the  southern  curtains  drawn  ? 
Fetch  me  a  fan,  and  so  begone  ! 


226  THE  PBOFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Not  that,  —  the  palm-tree's  rustling  leaf 
Brought  from  a  parching  coral-reef  ! 
Its  breath  is  heated  ;  —  I  would  swing 
The  broad  gray  plumes,  —  the  eagle's  wing. 

I  hate  these  roses'  feverish  blood  !  — 
Pluck  me  a  half-blown  lily-bud, 
A  long-stemmed  lily  from  the  lake, 
Cold  as  a  coiling  water-snake. 

Rain  me  sweet  odors  on  the  air, 
And  wheel  me  up  my  Indian  chair, 
And  spread  some  book  not  overwise 
Flat  out  before  my  sleepy  eyes. 

—  Who  knows  it  not,  —  this  dead  recoil 
Of  weary  fibres  stretched  with  toil,  — 
The  pulse  that  flutters  faint  and  low 
When  Summer's  seething  breezes  blow  ? 

O  Nature  !  bare  thy  loving  breast 
And  give  thy  child  one  hour  of  rest,  — 
One  little  hour  to  lie  unseen 
Beneath  thy  scarf  of  leafy  green  ! 

So,  curtained  by  a  singing  pine, 
Its  murmuring  voice  shall  blend  with  mine- 
Till,  lost  in  dreams,  my  faltering  lay 
In  sweeter  music  dies  away. 


X. 


I  pray  thee  by  the  soul  of  her  that  bore  thee, 
By  thine  own  sister's  spirit  I  implore  thee, 
Deal  gently  with  the  leaves  that  lie  before  thee  ! 

For  Iris  had  no  mother  to  infold  her, 

Nor  ever  leaned  upon  a  sister's  shoulder, 

Telling  the  twilight  thoughts  that  Nature  told  her. 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    227 

She  had  not  learned  the  mystery  of  awaking 
Those  chorded  keys  that  soothe  a  sorrow's  aching, 
Giving  the  dumb  heart  voice,  that  else  were  breaking. 

Yet  lived,  wrought,  suffered.     Lo,  the  pictured  token  I 
Why  should  her  tieetiug  day-dreams  fade  unspoken, 
Like  daffodils  that  die  with  sheaths  unbroken  ? 

She  knew  not  love,  yet  lived  in  maiden  fancies,  — 

Walked  simply  clad,  a  queen  of  high  romances, 

And  talked  strange  tongues  with  angels  in  her  trances. 

Twin-souled  she  seemed,  a  twofold  nature  wearing,  — 

Sometimes  a  flashing  falcon  in  her  daring, 

Then  a  poor  matuless  dove  that  droops  despairing. 

Questioning  all  things  :  Why  her  Lord  had  sent  her  ? 
What  were  these  torturing  gif tg,  and  wherefore  lent  her  ? 
Scornful  as  spirit  fallen,  its  own  tormentor. 

And  then  all  tears  and  anguish  :  Queen  of  Heaven, 
Sweet  Saints,  and  Thou  by  mortal  sorrows  riven, 
Save  me  !  oh,  save  me  !  Shall  I  die  forgiven  ? 

And  then Ah,  God  !     But  nay,  it  little  matters  : 

Look  at  the  wasted  seeds  that  autumn  scatters, 
The  myriad  germs  that  Nature  shapes  and  shatters  I 

If  she  had Well !     She  longed,  and  knew  not  wherefore 

Had  the  world  nothing  she  might  live  to  care  for  ? 
No  second  self  to  say  her  evening  prayer  for  ? 

She  knew  the  marble  shapes  that  set  men  dreaming, 
Yet  with  her  shoulders  bare  and  tresses  streaming 
Showed  not  unlovely  to  her  simple  seeming. 

Vain  ?     Let  it  be  so  !     Nat-ire  was  her  teacher. 

What  if  a  lonely  and  nnsistered  creature 

Loved  her  own  harmless  gift  of  pleasing  feature, 


228    THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Saying,  unsaddened,  —  This  shall  soon  be  faded, 
And  double-hued  the  shining  tresses  braided, 
And  all  the  sunlight  of  the  morning  shaded  ? 

This  her  poor  book  is  full  of  saddest  follies, 

Of  tearful  smiles  and  laughing  melancholies, 
With  summer  roses  twined  and  wintry  hollies. 

In  the  strange  crossing  of  uncertain  chances, 
Somewhere,  beneath  some  maiden's  tear-dimmed  glances 
May  fall  her  little  book  of  dreams  and  fancies. 

Sweet  sister  !  Iris,  who  shall  never  name  thee, 
Trembling  for  fear  her  open  heart  ma^  shame  thee, 
Speaks  from  this  vision-haunted  page  to  claim  thee. 

Spare  her,  I  pray  thee  !     If  the  maid  is  sleeping, 
Peace  with  her  !  she  has.had  her  hour  pf  weeping. 
No  more  !     She  leaves  her  memory  in  thy  keeping. 


These  verses  were  written  in  the  first  leaves  of  the 
locked  volume.  As  I  turned  the  pages,  I  hesitated 
for  a  moment.  Is  it  quite  fair  to  take  advantage  of 
a  generous,  trusting  impulse  to  read  the  unsunned 
depths  of  a  young  girl's  nature,  which  I  can  look 
through,  as  the  balloon -voyagers  tell  us  they  see  from 
their  hanging-baskets  through  the  translucent  waters 
which  the  keenest  eye  of  such  as  sail  over  them  in 
ships  might  strive  to  pierce  in  vain?  Why  has  the 
child  trusted  me  with  such  artless  confessions,  —  self - 
revelations,  which  might  be  whispered  by  trembling- 
lips,  under  the  veil  of  twilight,  in  sacred  confessionals, 
but  which  I  cannot  look  at  in  the  light  of  day  without 
a  feeling  of  wronging  a  sacred  confidence? 

To  all  this  the  answer  seemed  plain  enough  after  a 
little  thought.  She  did  not  know  how  fearfully  she 
had  disclosed  herself;  she  was  too  profoundly  inno- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    229 

cent.  Her  soul  was  no  more  ashamed  than  the  fair 
shapes  that  walked  in  Eden  without  a  thought  of  over- 
liberal  loveliness.  Having  nobody  to  tell  her  story 
to,  —  having,  as  she  said  in  her  verses,  no  musical 
instrument  to  laugh  and  cry  with  her,  —  nothing,  in 
short,  but  the  language  of  pen  and  pencil,  —  all  the 
veinings  of  her  nature  were  impressed  on  these  pages 
as  those  of  a  fresh  leaf  are  transferred  to  the  blank 
sheets  which  inclose  it.  It  was  the  same  thing  which 
I  remember  seeing  beautifully  shown  in  a  child  of  some 
four  or  five  years  we  had  one  day  at  our  boarding- 
house.  The  child  was  a  deaf  mute.  But  its  soul  had 
the  inner  sense  that  answers  to  hearing,  and  the  shap 
ing  capacity  which  through  natural  organs  realizes 
itself  in  words.  Only  it  had  to  talk  with  its  face 
alone;  and  such  speaking  eyes,  such  rapid  alterna 
tions  of  feeling  and  shifting  expressions  of  thought  as 
flitted  over  its  face,  I  have  never  seen  in  any  other 
human  countenance. 

I  wonder  if  something  of  spiritual  transparency  is 
not  typified  in  the  golden-Monde  organization.  There 
are  a  great  many  little  creatures,  —  many  small  fishes, 
for  instance,  —  which  are  literally  transparent,  with 
the  exception  of  some  of  the  internal  organs.  The 
heart  can  be  seen  beating  as  if  in  a  case  of  clouded 
crystal.  The  central  nervous  column  with  its  sheath 
runs  as  a  dark  stripe  through  the  whole  length  of  the 
diaphanous  muscles  of  the  body.  Other  little  crea 
tures  are  so  darkened  with  pigment  that  we  can  see 
only  their  surface.  Conspirators  and  poisoners  are 
painted  with  black,  beady  eyes  and  swarthy  hue; 
Judas,  in  Leonardo's  picture,  is  the  model  of  them 
all. 

However  this  may  be,  I  should  say  there  never  had 


280   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

been  a  book  like  this  of  Iris,  —  so  full  of  the  heart's 
silent  language,  so  transparent  that  the  heart  itself 
could  be  seen  beating  through  it.  I  should  say  there 
never  could  have  been  such  a  book,  but  for  one  recol 
lection,  which  is  not  peculiar  to  myself,  but  is  shared 
by  a  certain  number  of  my  former  townsmen.  If 
you  think  I  overcolor  this  matter  of  the  young  girl's 
book,  hear  this,  which  there  are  others,  as  I  just  said, 
besides  myself,  will  tell  you  is  strictly  true. 

The  Boole  of  the  Three  Maiden  Sisters. 

In  the  town  called  Cantabridge,  now  a  city,  water- 
veined  and  gas  windpiped,  in  the  street  running  down 
to  the  Bridge,  beyond  which  dwelt  Sally,  told  of  in  a 
book  of  a  friend  of  mine,  was  of  old  a  house  inhabited 
by  three  maidens.  They  left  no  near  kinsfolk,  I  be 
lieve  ;  whether  they  did  or  not,  I  have  no  ill  to  speak 
of  them;  for  they  lived  and  died  in  all  good  report 
and  maidenly  credit.  The  house  they  lived  in  was  of 
the  small,  gambrel-roofed  cottage  pattern,  after  the 
shape  of  Esquires'  houses,  but  after  the  size  of  the 
dwellings  of  handicraftsmen.  The  lower  story  was 
fitted  up  as  a  shop.  Specially  was  it  provided  with 
one  of  those  half -doors  now  so  rarely  met  with,  which 
are  to  whole  doors  as  spencers  worn  by  old  folk  are 
to  coats.  They  speak  of  limited  commerce  united 
with  a  social  or  observing  disposition  on  the  part  of 
the  shopkeeper,  —  allowing,  as  they  do,  talk  with  pass 
ers-by,  yet  keeping  off  such  as  have  not  the  excuse 
of  business  to  cross  the  threshold.  On  the  door-posts, 
at  either  side,  above  the  half -door,  hung  certain  per 
ennial  articles  of  merchandise,  of  which  my  memory 
still  has  hanging  among  its  faded  photographs  a  kind 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    231 

of  netted  scarf  and  some  pairs  of  thick  woollen  stock 
ings.  More  articles,  but  not  very  many,  were  stored 
inside;  and  there  was  one  drawer,  containing  chil 
dren's  books,  out  of  which  I  once  was  treated  to  a 
minute  quarto  ornamented  with  handsome  cuts.  This 
was  the  only  purchase  I  ever  knew  to  be  made  at  the 
shop  kept  by  the  three  maiden  ladies,  though  it  is 
probable  there  were  others.  So  long  as  I  remember 
the  shop,  the  same  scarf  and,  I  should  say,  the  same 
stockings  hung  on  the  door-posts.  —  [You  think  I  am 
exaggerating  again,  and  that  shopkeepers  would  not 
keep  the  same  article  exposed  for  years.  Come  to 
me,  the  Professor,  and  I  will  take  you  in  five  minutes 
to  a  shop  in  this  city  where  I  will  show  you  an  article 
hanging  now  in  the  very  place  where  more  than  thirty 
years  ago  I  myself  inquired  the  price  of  it  of  the  pres 
ent  head  of  the  establishment.1] 

The  three  maidens  were  of  comely  presence,  and  one 
of  them  had  had  claims  to  be  considered  a  Beauty. 
When  I  saw  them  in  the  old  meeting-house  on  Sun 
days,  as  they  rustled  in  through  the  aisles  in  silks  and 
satins,  not  gay,  but  more  than  decent,  as  I  remember 
them,  I  thought  of  My  Lady  Bountiful  in  the  history 
of  "Little  King  Pippin,"  and  of  the  Madam  Blaize  of 
Goldsmith  (who,  by  the  way,  must  have  taken  the  hint 
of  it  from  a  pleasant  poem,  "Monsieur  de  la  Palisse," 
attributed  to  De  la  Monnoye,  in  the  collection  of 
French  songs  before  me).2  There  was  some  story  of 
an  old  romance  in  which  the  Beauty  had  played  her 
part.  Perhaps  they  all  had  had  lovers ;  for,  as  I  said, 

1  This  was  a  glass  alembic,  which  hung  up  in  Daniel  Hench 
man's  apothecary  shop,  corner  of  Cambridge  and  Chambers 
streets. 

a  Vide  Bartlett's  Familiar  Quotations. 


232   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

they  were  shapely  and  seemly  personages,  as  I  remem 
ber  them ;  but  their  lives  \vere  out  of  the  flower  and 
in  the  berry  at  the  time  of  my  first  recollections. 

One  after  another  they  all  three  dropped  away,  ob 
jects  of  kindly  attention  to  the  good  people  round, 
leaving  little  or  almost  nothing,  and  nobody  to  in 
herit  it.  Not  absolutely  nothing,  of  course.  There 
must  have  been  a  few  old  dresses  —  perhaps  some  bits 
of  furniture,  a  Bible,  and  the  spectacles  the  good  old 
souls  read  it  through,  and  little  keepsakes,  such  as 
make  us  cry  to  look  at,  when  we  find  them  in  old 
drawers ;  —  such  relics  there  must  have  been.  But 
there  was  more.  There  was  a  manuscript  of  some 
hundred  pages,  closely  written,  in  which  the  poor 
things  had  chronicled  for  many  years  the  incidents  of 
their  daily  life.  After  their  death  it  was  passed  round 
somewhat  freely,  and  fell  into  my  hands.  How  I 
have  cried  and  laughed  and  colored  over  it !  There 
was  nothing  in  it  to  be  ashamed  of,  perhaps  there 
was  nothing  in  it  to  laugh  at,  but  such  a  picture  of  the 
mode  of  being  of  poor  simple  good  old  women  I  do 
believe  was  never  drawn  before.  And  there  were  all 
the  smallest  incidents  recorded,  such  as  do  really 
make  up  humble  life,  but  which  die  out  of  all  mere 
literary  memoirs,  as  the  houses  where  the  Egyptians 
or  the  Athenians  lived  crumble  and  leave  only  their 
temples  standing.  I  know,  for  instance,  that  on  a 
given  day  of  a  certain  year,  a  kindly  woman,  herself 
a  poor  widow,  now,  I  trust,  not  without  special  mer 
cies  in  heaven  for  her  good  deeds,  —  for  I  read  her 
name  on  a  proper  tablet  in  the  churchyard  a  week  ago, 
—  sent  a  fractional  pudding  from  her  own  table  to  the 
Maiden  Sisters,  who,  I  fear,  from  the  warmth  and 
detail  of  their  description,  were  fasting,  or  at  least  on 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    233 

short  allowance,  about  that  time.  I  know  who  sent 
them  the  segment  of  melon,  which  in  her  riotous  fancy 
one  of  them  compared  to  those  huge  barges  to  which 
we  give  the  ungracious  name  of  mudscows.  But  why 
should  I  illustrate  further  what  it  seems  almost  a 
breach  of  confidence  to  speak  of?  Some  kind  friend, 
who  could  challenge  a  nearer  interest  than  the  curious 
strangers  into  whose  hands  the  book  might  fall,  at 
last  claimed  it,  and  I  was  glad  that  it  should  be 
henceforth  sealed  to  common  eyes.  I  learned  from  it 
that  every  good  and,  alas !  every  evil  act  we  do  may 
slumber  unforgotten  even  in  some  earthly  record.  I 
got  a  new  lesson  in  that  humanity  which  our  sharp 
race  finds  it  so  hard  to  learn.  The  poor  widow,  fight 
ing  hard  to  feed  and  clothe  and  educate  her  children, 
had  not  forgotten  the  poorer  ancient  maidens.  I  re 
membered  it  the  other  day,  as  I  stood  by  her  place  of 
rest,  and  I  felt  sure  that  it  was  remembered  elsewhere. 
I  know  there  are  prettier  words  than  pudding,  but 
I  can't  help  it,  — the  pudding  went  upon  the  record,  I 
feel  sure,  with  the  mite  which  was  cast  into  the  treas 
ury  by  that  other  poor  widow  whose  deed  the  world 
shall  remember  forever,  and  with  the  coats  and  gar 
ments  which  the  good  women  cried  over,  when  Tab- 
itha,  called  by  interpretation  Dorcas,  lay  dead  in  the 
upper  chamber,  with  her  charitable  needlework 
strewed  around  her. 


—  Such  was  the  Book  of  the  Maiden  Sisters.  You 
will  believe  me  more  readily  now  when  I  tell  you  that 
I  found  the  soul  of  Iris  in  the  one  that  lay  open  be 
fore  me.  Sometimes  it  was  a  poem  that  held  it,  some 
times  a  drawing,  —  angel,  arabesque,  caricature,  or  a 


234   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

mere  hieroglyphic  symbol  of  which  I  could  make  no 
thing.  A  rag  of  cloud  on  one  page,  as  I  remember, 
with  a  streak  of  red  zigzagging  out  of  it  across  the 
paper  as  naturally  as  a  crack  runs  through  a  China 
bowl.  On  the  next  page  a  dead  bird,  —  some  little 
favorite,  I  suppose;  for  it  was  worked  out  with  a 
special  love,  and  I  saw  on  the  leaf  that  sign  with 
which  once  or  twice  in  my  life  I  have  had  a  letter 
sealed,  —  a  round  spot  where  the  paper  is  slightly 
corrugated,  and,  if  there  is  writing  there,  the  letters 
are  somewhat  faint  and  blurred.  Most  of  the  pages 
were  surrounded  with  emblematic  traceries.  It  was 
strange  to  me  at  first  to  see  how  often  she  introduced 
those  homelier  wild -flowers  which  we  call  weeds,  —  for 
it  seemed  there  was  none  of  them  too  humble  for  her 
to  love,  and  none  too  little  cared  for  by  Nature  to  be 
without  its  beauty  for  her  artist  eye  and  pencil.  By 
the  side  of  the  garden -flowers, — of  Spring's  curled 
darlings,  the  hyacinths,  of  rosebuds,  dear  to  sketching 
maidens,  of  flower-de-luces  and  morning-glories,  — 
nay,  oftener  than  these,  and  more  tenderly  caressed 
by  the  colored  brush  that  rendered  them,  —  were  those 
common  growths  which  fling  themselves  to  be 
crushed  under  our  feet  and  our  wheels,  making  them 
selves  so  cheap  in  this  perpetual  martyrdom  that  we 
forget  each  of  them  is  a  ray  of  the  Divine  beauty. 

Yellow  japanned  buttercups  and  star-disked  dande 
lions,  —  just  as  we  see  them  lying  in  the  grass,  like 
sparks  that  have  leaped  from  the  kindling  sun  of 
summer;  the  profuse  daisy -like  flower  which  whitens 
the  fields,  to  the  great  disgust  of  liberal  shepherds, 
yet  seems  fair  to  loving  eyes,  with  its  button-like 
mound  of  gold  set  round  with  milk-white  rays;  the 
tall-stemmed  succory,  setting  its  pale  blue  flowers 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

aflame,  one  after  another,  sparingly,  as  the  lights  are 
kindled  in  the  candelabra  of  decaying  palaces  where 
the  heirs  of  dethroned  monarchs  are  dying  out ;  the 
red  and  white  clovers,  the  broad,  flat  leaves  of  the 
plantain,  —  "the  white  man's  foot,"  as  the  Indians 
called  it,  —  the  wiry,  jointed  stems  of  that  iron  creep 
ing  plant  which  we  call  "knot-^rrass,"  and  which  loves 
its  life  so  dearly  that  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  mur 
der  it  with  a  hoe,  as  it  clings  to  the  cracks  of  the 
pavement;  —  all  these  plants,  and  many  more,  she 
wove  into  her  fanciful  garlands  and  borders.  —  On 
one  of  the  pages  were  some  musical  notes.  I  touched 
them  from  curiosity  on  a  piano  belonging  to  one  of 
our  boarders.  Strange!  There  are  passages  that  I 
have  heard  before,  plaintive,  full  of  some  hidden 
meaning,  as  if  they  were  gasping  for  words  to  inter 
pret  them.  She  must  have  heard  the  strains  that  have 
so  excited  my  curiosity,  coming  from  my  neighbor's 
chamber.  The  illuminated  border  she  had  traced 
round  the  page  that  held  these  notes  took  the  place  of 
the  words  they  seemed  to  be  aching  for.  Above,  a 
long  monotonous  sweep  of  waves,  leaden-hued,  anx 
ious  and  jaded  and  sullen,  if  you  can  imagine  such  an 
expression  in  water.  On  one  side  an  Alpine  needle, 
as  it  were,  of  black  basalt,  girdled  with  snow.  On 
the  other  a  threaded  waterfall.  The  red  morning-tint 
that  shone  in  the  drops  had  a  strange  look,  —  one 
would  say  the  cliff  was  bleeding ;  —  perhaps  she  did 
not  mean  it.  Below,  a  stretch  of  sand,  and  a  solitary 
bird  of  prey,  with  his  wings  spread  over  some  unseen 
object.  —  And  on  the  very  next  page  a  procession 
wound  along,  after  the  fashion  of  that  on  the  title- 
page  of  Fuller's  "Holy  War,"  in  which  I  recognized 
without  difficulty  every  boarder  at  our  table  in  all 


236    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  glory  of  the  most  resplendent  caricature  —  three 
only  excepted,  —  the  Little  Gentleman,  myself,  and 
one  other. 

I  confess  I  did  expect  to  see  something  that  would 
remind  me  of  the  girl's  little  deformed  neighbor,  if 
not  portraits  of  him.  —  There  is  a  left  arm  again, 
though; — no, — that  is  from  the  "Fighting  Gladi 
ator," —  the  "Jeune,  Heros  combattant"  of  the 
Louvre;  —  there  is  the  broad  ring  of  the  shield. 
From  a  cast,  doubtless.  [The  separate  casts  of  the 
"Gladiator's"  arm  look  immense;  but  in  its  place 
the-  limb  looks  light,  almost  slender,  —  such  is  the  per 
fection  of  that  miraculous  marble.  I  never  felt  as  if 
I  touched  the  life  of  the  old  Greeks  until  I  looked  on 
that  statue.]  —  Here  is  something  very  odd,  to  be 
sure.  An  Eden  of  all  the  humped  and  crooked  crea 
tures  !  What  could  have  been  in  her  head  when  she 
worked  out  such  a  fantasy?  She  has  contrived  to 
give  them  all  beauty  or  dignity  or  melancholy  grace. 
A  Bactrian  camel  lying  under  a  palm.  A  dromedary 
flashing  up  the  sands,  —  spray  of  the  dry  ocean  sailed 
by  the  "ship  of  the  desert."  A  herd  of  buffaloes, 
uncouth,  shaggy -maned,  heavy  in  the  forehand,  light 
in  the  hind-quarter.  [The  buffalo  is  the  lion  of  the 
ruminants.]  And  there  is  a  Norman  horse,  with  his 
huge,  rough  collar,  echoing,  as  it  were,  the  natural 
form  of  the  other  beast.  And  here  are  twisted  ser 
pents;  and  stately  swans,  with  answering  curves  in 
their  bowed  necks,  as  if  they  had  snake's  blood  under 
their  white  feathers;  and  grave,  high-shouldered  her 
ons  standing  on  one  foot  like  cripples,  and  looking 
at  life  round  them  with  the  cold  stare  of  monumen 
tal  effigies.  —  A  very  odd  page  indeed !  Not  a  crea 
ture  in  it  without  a  curve  or  a  twist,  and  not  one  of 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    287 

them  a  mean  figure  to  look  at.  You  can  make  your 
own  comment;  I  am  fanciful,  you  know.  I  believe 
she  is  trying  to  idealize  what  we  vulgarly  call  deform 
ity,  which  she  strives  to  look  at  in  the  light  of  one  of 
Nature's  eccentric  curves,  belonging  to  her  system  of 
beauty,  as  the  hyperbola  and  parabola  belong  to  the 
conic  sections,  though  we  cannot  see  them  as  symmet 
rical  and  entire  figures,  like  the  circle  and  ellipse. 
At  any  rate,  I  cannot  help  referring  this  paradise  of 
twisted  spines  to  some  idea  floating  in  her  head  con 
nected  with  her  friend  whom  Nature  has  warped  in 
the  moulding.  —  That  is  nothing  to  another  transcen 
dental  fancy  of  mine.  I  believe  her  soul  thinks  it 
self  in  his  little  crooked  body  at  times,  —  if  it  does  not 
really  get  freed  or  half  freed  from  her  own.  Did  you 
ever  see  a  case  of  catalepsy?  You  know  what  I  mean, 
—  transient  loss  of  sense,  will,  and  motion ;  body  and 
limbs  taking  any  position  in  which  they  are  put,  as  if 
they  belonged  to  a  lay -figure.  She  had  been  talking 
with  him  and  listening  to  him  one  day  when  the  board 
ers  moved  from  the  table  nearly  all  at  once.  But  she 
sat  as  before,  her  cheek  resting  on  her  hand,  her 
amber  eyes  wide  open  and  still.  I  went  to  her,  —  she 
was  breathing  as  usual,  and  her  heart  was  beating 
naturally  enough,  —  but  she  did  not  answer.  I  bent 
her  arm ;  it  was  as  plastic  as  softened  wax,  and  kept 
the  place  I  gave  it.  —  This  will  never  do,  though,  — 
and  I  sprinkled  a  few  drops  of  water  on  her  fore 
head.  She  started  and  looked  round.  —  I  have  been 
in  a  dream,  —  she  said ;  —  I  feel  as  if  all  my  strength 
were  in  this  arm ;  —  give  me  your  hand !  —  She  took 
my  right  hand  in  her  left,  which  looked  soft  and 
white  enough,  but  —  Good  Heaven!  I  believe  she 
will  crack  my  bones  I  All  the  nervous  power  in  her 


238     THE    PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

body  must  have  flashed  through  those  muscles;  as 
when  a  crazy  lady  snaps  her  iron  window-bars,  —  she 
who  could  hardly  glove  herself  when  in  her  common 
health.  Iris  turned  pale,  and  the  tears  came  to  her 
eyes;  —  she  saw  she  had  given  pain.  Then  she  trem 
bled,  and  might  have  fallen  but  for  me ;  —  the  poor 
little  soul  had  been  in  one  of  those  trances  that  belong 
to  the  spiritual  pathology  of  higher  natures,  mostly 
those  of  women. 

To  come  back  to  this  wondrous  book  of  Iris.  Two 
pages  faced  each  other  which  I  took  for  symbolical 
expressions  of  two  states  of  mind.  On  the  left  hand, 
a  bright  blue  sky  washed  over  the  page,  specked  with 
a  single  bird.  No  trace  of  earth,  but  still  the  winged 
creature  seemed  to  be  soaring  upward  and  upward. 
Facing  it,  one  of  those  black  dungeons  such  as  Pira- 
nesi  alone  of  all  men  has  pictured.  I  am  sure  she 
must  have  seen  those  awful  prisons  of  his,  out  of  which 
the  Opium-Eater  got  his  nightmare  vision,  described 
by  another  as  "cemeteries  of  departed  greatness, 
where  monstrous  and  forbidden  things  are  crawling 
and  twining  their  slimy  convolutions  among  moulder 
ing  bones,  broken  sculpture,  and  mutilated  inscrip 
tions."  Such  a  black  dungeon  faced  the  page  that 
held  the  blue  sky  and  the  single  bird;  at  the  bottom 
of  it  something  was  coiled,  —  what,  and  whether  meant 
for  dead  or  alive,  my  eyes  could  not  make  out. 

I  told  you  the  young  girl's  soul  was  in  this  book. 
As  I  turned  over  the  last  leaves  I  could  not  help  start 
ing.  There  were  all  sorts  of  faces  among  the  ara 
besques  which  laughed  and  scowled  in  the  borders 
that  ran  round  the  pages.  They  had  mostly  the  out 
line  of  childish  or  womanly  or  manly  beauty,  without 
very  distinct  individuality.  But  at  last  it  seemed  to 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.     239 

me  that  some  of  them  were  taking  on  a  look  not 
wholly  unfamiliar  to  me ;  there  were  features  that  did 
not  seem  new.  — Can  it  be  so?  Was  there  ever  such 
innocence  in  a  creature  so  full  of  life?  She  tells  her 
heart's  secrets  as  a  three-years-old  child  betrays  itself 
without  need  of  being  questioned !  This  was  no  com 
mon  miss,  such  as  are  turned  out  in  scores  from  the 
young-lady-factories,  with  parchments  warranting 
them  accomplished  and  virtuous,  —  in  case  anybody 
should  question  the  fact.  I  began  to  understand 
her ;  —  and  what  is  so  charming  as  to  read  the  secret 
of  a  real  femme  incomprise  ?  —  for  such  there  are, 
though  they  are  not  the  ones  who  think  themselves 
uncomprehended  women. 

Poets  are  never  young,  in  one  sense.  Their  deli 
cate  ear  hears  the  far-off  whispers  of  eternity,  which 
coarser  souls  must  travel  towards  for  scores  of  years 
before  their  dull  sense  is  "touched  by  them.  A  mo 
ment's  insight  is  sometimes  worth  a  life's  experience. 
I  have  frequently  seen  children,  long  exercised  by 
pain  and  exhaustion,  whose  features  had  a  strange 
look  of  advanced  age.  Too  often  one  meets  such  in 
our  charitable  institutions.  Their  faces  are  saddened 
and  wrinkled,  as  if  their  few  summers  were  threescore 
years  and  ten. 

And  so,  many  youthful  poets  have  written  as  if 
their  hearts  were  old  before  their  time ;  their  pensive 
morning  twilight  has  been  as  cool  and  saddening  as 
that  of  evening  in  more  common  lives.  The  pro 
found  melancholy  of  those  lines  of  Shelley, 

"  I   could  lie  down  like  a  tired  child 
And  weep  away  the  life  of  care 
Which  I  have  borne  and  yet  must  bear  " 

came  from  a  heart,  as  he  says,  "too  soon  grown  old," 


240    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

—  at  twenty-six  years,  as  dull  people  count  time,  even 
when  they  talk  of  poets. 

I  know  enough  to  be  prepared  for  an  exceptional 
nature,  —  only  this  gift  of  the  hand  in  rendering 
every  thought  in  form  and  color,  as  well  as  in  words, 
gives  a  richness  to  this  young  girl's  alphabet  of  feeling 
and  imagery  that  takes  me  by  surprise.  And  then 
besides,  and  most  of  all,  I  am  puzzled  at  her  sudden 
and  seemingly  easy  confidence  in  me.  Perhaps  I  owe 
it  to  my  —  Well,  no  matter !  How  one  must  love  the 
editor  who  first  calls  him  the  venerable  So-and-So ! 

—  I  locked  the  book  and  sighed  as  I  laid  it  down. 
The  world  is  always  ready  to  receive  talent  with  open 
arms.  Very  often  it  does  not  know  what  to  do  with 
genius.  Talent  is  a  docile  creature.  It  bows  its 
head  meekly  while  the  world  slips  the  collar  over  it. 
It  backs  into  the  shafts  like  a  lamb.  It  draws  its 
load  cheerfully,  and  is  patient  of  the  bit  and  of  the 
whip.  But  genius  is  always  impatient  of  its  harness ; 
its  wild  blood  makes  it  hard  to  train. 

Talent  seems,  at  first,  in  one  sense,  higher  than 
genius,  —  namely,  that  it  is  more  uniformly  and  abso 
lutely  submitted  to  the  will,  and  therefore  more  dis 
tinctly  human  in  its  character.  Genius,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  much  more  like  those  instincts  which  govern 
the  admirable  movements  of  the  lower  creatures,  and 
therefore  seems  to  have  something  of  the  lower  or 
animal  character.  A  goose  flies  by  a  chart  which  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society  could  not  mend.  A  poet, 
like  the  goose,  sails  without  visible  landmarks  to 
unexplored  regions  of  truth,  which  philosophy  has 
yet  to  lay  down  on  its  atlas.  The  philosopher  gets  his 
track  by  observation;  the  poet  trusts  to  his  inner 
sense,  and  makes  the  straighter  and  swifter  line. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    241 

And  yet,  to  look  at  it  in  another  light,  is  not  even 
the  lowest  instinct  more  truly  divine  than  any  volun 
tary  human  act  done  by  the  suggestion  of  reason? 
What  is  a  bee's  architecture  but  an  tmobstructed 
divine  thought?  —  what  is  a  builder's  approximative 
rule  but  an  obstructed  thought  of  the  Creator,  a  muti 
lated  and  imperfect  copy  of  some  absolute  rule  Divine 
Wisdom  has  established,  transmitted  through  a  hu 
man  soul  as  an  image  through  clouded  glass? 

Talent  is  a  very  common  family -trait ;  genius  be 
longs  rather  to  individuals;  —  just  as  you  find  one 
giant  or  one  dwarf  in  a  family,  but  rarely  a  whole 
brood  of  either.  Talent  is  often  to  be  envied,  and 
genius  veiy  commonly  to  be  pitied.  It  stands  twice 
the  chance  of  the  other  of  dying  in  hospital,  in  jail, 
in  debt,  in  bad  repute.  It  is  a  perpetual  insult  to 
mediocrity;  its  every  word  is  a  trespass  against  some 
body's  vested  ideas,  — blasphemy  against  somebody's 
O'rw,  or  intangible  private  truth. 

—  What  is  the  use  of  my  weighing  out  antitheses 
in  this  way,  like  a  rhetorical  grocer?  —  You  know 
twenty  men  of  talent,  who  are  making  their  way  in 
the  world;  you  may,  perhaps,  know  one  man  of  ge 
nius,  and  very  likely  do  not  want  to  know  any  more. 
For  a  divine  instinct,  such  as  drives  the  goose  south 
ward  and  the  poet  heavenward,  is  a  hard  thing  to 
manage,  and  proves  too  strong  for  many  whom  it  pos 
sesses.  It  must  have  been  a  terrible  thing  to  have  a 
friend  like  Chatterton  or  Burns.  And  here  is  a  being 
who  certainly  has  more  than  talent,  at  once  poet  and 
artist  in  tendency,  if  not  yet  fairly  developed,  —  a 
woman,  too ;  —  and  genius  grafted  on  womanhood 
is  like  to  overgrow  it  and  break  its  stem,  as  you  may 
see  a  grafted  fruit-tree  spreading  over  the  stock  which 
cannot  keep  pace  with  its  evolution. 


242    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I  think  now  you  know  something  of  this  young 
person.  She  wants  nothing  but  an  atmosphere  to 
expand  in.  Now  and  then  one  meets  with  a  nature 
for  which  our  hard,  practical  New  England  life  is  ob 
viously  utterly  incompetent.  It  comes  up,  as  a  South 
ern  seed,  dropped  by  accident  in  one  of  our  gardens, 
finds  itself  trying  to  grow  and  blow  into  flower  among 
the  homely  roots  and  the  hardy  shrubs  that  surround 
it.  There  is  no  question  that  certain  persons  who  are 
born  among  us  find  themselves  many  degrees  too  far 
north.  Tropical  by  organization,  they  cannot  fight 
for  life  with  our  eastern  and  northwestern  breezes  with 
out  losing  the  color  and  fragrance  into  which  their 
lives  would  have  blossomed  in  the  latitude  of  myrtles 
and  oranges.  Strange  effects  are  produced  by  suffer 
ing  any  living  thing  to  be  developed  under  conditions 
such  as  Nature  had  not  intended  for  it.  A  French 
physiologist  confined  some  tadpoles  under  water  in  the 
dark.  Removed  from  the  natural  stimulus  of  light, 
they  did  not  develop  legs  and  arms  at  the  proper 
period  of  their  growth,  and  so  become  frogs;  they 
swelled  and  spread  into  gigantic  tadpoles.  I  have 
seen  a  hundred  colossal  human  tadpoles,  —  over 
grown  larvae  or  embryos ;  nay,  I  am  afraid  we  Prot 
estants  should  look  on  a  considerable  proportion  of 
the  Holy  Father's  one  hundred  and  thirty -nine  mil 
lions  as  spiritual  la-rvce,  sculling  about  in  the  dark  by 
the  aid  of  their  caudal  extremities,  instead  of  stand 
ing  on  their  legs,  and  breathing  by  gills,  instead  of 
taking  the  free  air  of  heaven  into  the  lungs  made  to 
receive  it.  Of  course  we  never  try  to  keep  young 
souls  in  the  tadpole  state,  for  fear  they  should  get 
a  pair  or  two  of  legs  by-and-by  and  jump  out  of  the 
pool  where  they  have  been  bred  and  fed!  Never  ! 
Never.  Never  ? 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    243 

Now  to  go  back  to  our  plant.  You  may  know, 
that,  for  the  earlier  stages  of  development  of  almost 
any  vegetable,  you  only  want  air,  water,  light,  and 
warmth.  But  by-and-by,  if  it  is  to  have  special  com 
plex  principles  as  a  part  of  its  organization,  they  must 
be  supplied  by  the  soil;  —  your  pears  will  crack,  if 
the  root  of  the  tree  gets  no  iron,  —  your  asparagus- 
bed  wants  salt  as  much  as  you  do.  Just  at  the  period 
of  adolescence,  the  mind  often  suddenly  begins  to 
come  into  flower  and  to  set  its  fruit.  Then  it  is  that 
many  young  natures,  having  exhausted  the  spiritual 
soil  round  them  of  all  it  contains  of  the  elements  they 
demand,  wither  away,  undeveloped  and  uncolored, 
unless  they  are  transplanted. 

Pray  for  these  dear  young  souls !  This  is  the  sec 
ond  natural  birth;  —  for  I  do  not  speak  of  those  pe 
culiar  religious  experiences  which  form  the  point  of 
transition  in  many  lives  between  the  consciousness  of 
a  general  relation  to  the  Divine  nature  and  a  special 
personal  relation.  The  litany  should  count  a  prayer 
for  them  in  the  list  of  its  supplications ;  masses  should 
be  said  for  them  as  for  souls  in  purgatory;  all  good 
Christians  should  remember  them  as  they  remember 
those  in  peril  through  travel  or  sickness  or  in  war 
fare. 

I  would  transport  this  child  to  Rome  at  once,  if  I 
had  my  will.  She  should  ripen  under  an  Italian  sun. 
She  should  walk  under  the  frescoed  vaults  of  palaces, 
until  her  colors  deepened  to  those  of  Venetian  beau 
ties,  and  her  forms  were  perfected  into  rivalry  with 
the  Greek  marbles,  and  the  east  wind  was  out  of  her 
soil.  Has  she  not  exhausted  this  lean  soil  of  the  ele 
ments  her  growing  nature  requires? 

I  do  not  know.  The  magnolia  grows  and  comes  into 


244  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

full  flower  on  Cape  Ann,  many  degrees  out  of  its 
proper  region.  I  was  riding  once  along  that  delicious 
road  between  the  hills  and  the  sea,  when  we  passed  a 
thicket  where  there  seemed  to  be  a  chance  of  finding 
it.  In  five  minutes  I  had  fallen  on  the  trees  in  full 
blossom,  and  filled  my  arms  with  the  sweet,  resplen 
dent  flowers.  I  could  not  believe  I  was  in  our  cold, 
northern  Essex,  which,  in  the  dreary  season  when  I 
pass  its  slate -colored,  unpainted  farm-houses,  and 
huge,  square,  windy,  'squire-built  "  mansions,"  looks 
as  brown  and  unvegetating  as  an  old  rug  with  its  pat 
terns  all  trodden  out  and  the  colored  fringe  worn  from 
all  its  border. 

If  the  magnolia  can  bloom  in  northern  New  Eng 
land,  why  should  not  a  poet  or  a  painter  come  to  his 
full  growth  here  just  as  well?  Yes,  but  if  the  gor 
geous  tree-flower  is  rare,  and  only  as  if  by  a  freak  of 
Nature  springs  up  in  a  single  spot  among  the  beeches 
and  alders,  is  there  not  as  much  reason  to  think  the 
perfumed  flower  of  imaginative  genius  will  find  it 
hard  to  be  born  and  harder  to  spread  its  leaves  in  the 
clear,  cold  atmosphere  of  our  ultra-temperate  zone  of 
humanity  ? 

Take  the  poet.  On  the  one  hand,  I  believe  that  a 
person  with  the  poetical  faculty  finds  material  every 
where.  The  grandest  objects  of  sense  and  thought 
are  common  to  all  climates  and  civilizations.  The 
sky,  the  woods,  the  waters,  the  storms,  life,  death, 
love,  the  hope  and  vision  of  eternity,  —  these  are  im 
ages  that  write  themselves  in  poetry  in  every  soul 
which  has  anything  of  the  divine  gift. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  lean, 
impoverished  life,  in  distinction  from  a  rich  and  sug 
gestive  one.  Which  our  common  New  England  life 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    245 

might  be  considered,  I  will  not  decide.  But  there  are 
some  things  I  think  the  poet  misses  in  our  western 
Eden.  I  trust  it  is  not  unpatriotic  to  mention  them 
in  this  point  of  view  as  they  come  before  us  in  so 
many  other  aspects. 

There  is  no  sufficient  flavor  of  humanity  in  the  soil 
out  of  which  we  grow.  At  Cantabridge,  near  the  sea, 
I  have  once  or  twice  picked  up  an  Indian  arrowhead 
in  a  fresh  furrow.  At  Canoe  Meadow,  in  the  Berk 
shire  Mountains,  I  have  found  Indian  arrowheads. 
So  everywhere  Indian  arrowheads.  Whether  a  hun 
dred  or  a  thousand  years  old,  who  knows?  who  cares? 
There  is  no  history  to  the  red  race,  —  there  is  hardly 
an  individual  in  it ;  —  a  few  instincts  on  legs  and  hold 
ing  a  tomahawk  —  there  is  the  Indian  of  all  time. 
The  story  of  one  red  ant  is  the  story  of  all  red  ants. 
So,  the  poet,  in  trying  to  wing  his  way  back  through 
the  life  that  has  kindled,  flitted,  and  faded  along  our 
watercourses  and  on  our  southern  hillsides  for  un 
known  generations,  finds  nothing  to  breathe  or  fly  in ; 
he  meets 

"  A  vast  vacuity  !  all  unawares, 
Fluttering  his  pennons  vain,  plumb  down  he  drops 
Ten  thousand  fathom  deep." 

But  think  of  the  Old  World, —that  part  of  it 
which  is  the  seat  of  ancient  civilization !  The  stakes 
of  the  Britons'  stockades  are  still  standing  in  the  bed 
of  the  Thames.  The  ploughman  turns  up  an  old 
Saxon's  bones,  and  beneath  them  is  a  tessellated  pave 
ment  of  the  time  of  the  Caesars.  In  Italy,  the  works 
of  mediaeval  Art  seem  to  be  of  yesterday,  —  Rome, 
under  her  kings,  is  but  an  intruding  new-comer,  as  we 
contemplate  her  in  the  shadow  of  the  Cyclopean  walls 
of  Fiesole  or  Volterra.  It  makes  a  man  human  to 


246    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

live  on  these  old  humanized  soils.  He  cannot  help 
marching  in  step  with  his  kind  in  the  rear  of  such  a 
procession.  They  say  a  dead  man's  hand  cures  swell 
ings,  if  laid  on  them.  There  is  nothing  like  the  dead 
cold  hand  of  the  Past  to  take  down  our  tumid  egotism 
and  lead  us  into  the  solemn  flow  of  the  life  of  our 
race.  Rousseau  came  out  of  one  of  his  sad  self -tor 
turing  fits,  as  he  cast  his  eye  on  the  arches  of  the  old 
Roman  aqueduct,  the  Pont  du  Gard. 

1  am  far  from  denying  that  there  is  an  attraction 
in  a  thriving  railroad  village.  The  new  "depot,"  the 
smartly -painted  pine  houses,  the  spacious  brick  hotel, 
the  white  meeting-house,  and  the  row  of  youthful  and 
leggy  trees  before  it,  are  exhilarating.  They  speak  of 
progress,  and  the  time  when  there  shall  be  a  city, 
with  a  His  Honor  the  Mayor,  in  the  place  of  their 
trim  but  transient  architectural  growths.  Pardon  me, 
if  I  prefer  the  pyramids.  They  seem  to  me  crystals 
formed  from  a  stronger  solution  of  humanity  than  the 
steeple  of  the  new  meeting-house.  I  may  be  wrong, 
but  the  Tiber  has  a  voice  for  me,  as  it  whispers  to 
the  piers  of  the  Pons  ^Elius,  even  more  full  of  mean 
ing  than  my  well-beloved  Charles  eddying  round  the 
piles  of  West  Boston  Bridge. 

Then,  again,  we  Yankees  are  a  kind  of  gypsies,  —  a 
mechanical  and  migratory  race.  A  poet  wants  a  home. 
He  can  dispense  with  an  apple-parer  and  a  reaping- 
machine.  I  feel  this  more  for  others  than  for  myself, 
for  the  home  of  my  birth  and  childhood  has  been  as 
yet  exempted  from  the  change  which  has  invaded 
almost  everything  around  it. 

—  Pardon  me  a  short  digression.     To  what  small 

1  It  is  now  gone,  and  there  is  nothing  to  mark  the  place  where 
it  stood. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    247 

things  our  memory  and  our  affections  attach  them 
selves  !  I  remember,  when  I  was  a  child,  that  one  of 
the  girls  planted  some  Star-of -Bethlehem  bulbs  in  the 
southwest  corner  of  our  front-yard.  Well,  I  left  the 
paternal  roof  and  wandered  in  other  lands,  and  learned 
to  think  in  the  words  of  strange  people.  But  after 
many  years,  as  I  looked  on  the  little  front-yard  again, 
it  occurred  to  me  that  there  used  to  be  some  Star-of- 
Bethlehems  in  the  southwest  corner.  The  grass  was 
tall  there,  and  the  blade  of  the  plant  is  very  much  like 
grass,  only  thicker  and  glossier.  Even  as  Tully 
parted  the  briers  and  brambles  when  he  hunted  for  the 
sphere -containing  cylinder  that  marked  the  grave  of 
Archimedes,  so  did  I  comb  the  grass  with  my  fingers 
for  my  monumental  memorial-flower.  Nature  had 
stored  my  keepsake  tenderly  in  her  bosom ;  the  glossy, 
faintly  streaked  blades  were  there ;  they  are  there  still, 
though  they  never  flower,  darkened  as  they  are  by  the 
shade  of  the  elms  and  rooted  in  the  matted  turf. 

Our  hearts  are  held  down  to  our  homes  by  innu 
merable  fibres,  trivial  as  that  I  have  just  recalled ;  but 
Gulliver  was  fixed  to  the  soil,  you  remember,  by 
pinning  his  head  a  hair  at  a  time.  Even  a  stone  with 
a  whitish  band  crossing  it,  belonging  to  the  pavement 
of  the  back-yard,  insisted  on  becoming  one  of  the  tal 
ismans  of  memory.  This  intussusception  of  the  ideas 
of  inanimate  objects,  and  their  faithful  storing  away 
among  the  sentiments,  are  curiously  prefigured  in  the 
material  structure  of  the  thinking  centre  itself.  In 
the  very  core  of  the  brain,  in  the  part  where  Des 
Cartes  placed  the  soul,  is  a  small  mineral  deposit, 
consisting,  as  I  have  seen  it  in  the  microscope,  of 
grape-like  masses  of  crystalline  matter. 

But  the  plants  that  come  up  every  year  in  the  same 


248   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

place,  like  the  Star-of-Bethlehems,  of  all  the  lesser 
objects,  give  me  the  liveliest  home-feeling.  Close  to 
our  ancient  gambrel-roofed  house  is  the  dwelling  of 
pleasant  old  Neighbor  Walrus.  I  remember  the 
sweet  honeysuckle  that  I  saw  in  flower  against  the  wall 
of  his  house  a  few  months  ago,  as  long  as  I  remember 
the  sky  and  stars.  That  clump  of  peonies,  butting 
their  purple  heads  through  the  soil  every  spring  in  just 
the  same  circle,  and  by-and-by  unpacking  their  hard 
balls  of  buds  in  flowers  big  enough  to  make  a  double 
handful  of  leaves,  has  come  up  in  just  that  place, 
Neighbor  Walrus  tells  me,  for  more  years  than  I  have 
passed  on  this  planet.  It  is  a  rare  privilege  in  our 
nomadic  state  to  find  the  home  of  one's  childhood  and 
its  immediate  neighborhood  thus  unchanged.  Many 
born  poets,  I  am  afraid,  flower  poorly  in  song,  or  not 
at  all,  because  they  have  been  too  often  transplanted. 
Then  a  good  many  of  our  race  are  very  hard  and 
unimaginative ;  —  their  voices  have  nothing  caressing ; 
their  movements  are  as  of  machinery  without  elasticity 
or  oil.  I  wish  it  were  fair  to  print  a  letter  a  young 
girl,  about  the  age  of  our  Iris,  wrote  a  short  time 
since.  "I  am***  ***  ***,"  she  says,  and  tells  her 
whole  name  outright.  Ah!  —  said  I,  when  I  read 
that  first  frank  declaration,  —  you  are  one  of  the  right 
sort!  —  She  was.  A  winged  creature  among  close- 
clipped  barn  door  fowl.  How  tired  the  poor  girl  was 
of  the  dull  life  about  her,  — the  old  woman's  "skele 
ton  hand"  at  the  window  opposite,  drawing  her  cur 
tains,  —  "Ma'am  —  —  shooing  away  the  hens,"  —  the 
vacuous  country  eyes  staring  at  her  as  only  country 
eyes  can  stare,  —  a  routine  of  mechanical  duties,  — 
and  the  soul's  half -articulated  cry  for  sympathy,  with 
out  an  answer  1  Yes, — pray  for  her,  and  for  all 


THE   PROFESSOK  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    249 

such!  Faith  often  cures  their  longings;  but  it  is  so 
hard  to  give  a  soul  to  heaven  that  has  not  first  been 
trained  in  the  fullest  and  sweetest  human  affections  ! 
Too  often  they  fling  their  hearts  away  on  unworthy 
objects.  Too  often  they  pine  in  a  secret  discontent, 
which  spreads  its  leaden  cloud  over  the  morning  of 
their  youth.  The  immeasurable  distance  between  one 
of  these  delicate  natures  and  the  average  youths 
among  whom  is  like  to  be  her  only  choice  makes  one's 
heart  ache.  How  many  women  are  born  too  finely 
organized  in  sense  and  soul  for  the  highway  they  must 
walk  with  feet  unshod  !  Life  is  adjusted  to  the  wants 
of  the  stronger  sex.  There  are  plenty  of  torrents  to 
be  crossed  in  its  journey;  but  their  stepping-stones 
are  measured  by  the  stride  of  man,  and  not  of  woman. 

Women  are  more  subject  than  men  to  atrophy  of 
the  heart.  So  says  the  great  medical  authority,  Laen- 
nec.  Incurable  cases  of  this  kind  used  to  find  their 
hospitals  in  convents.  We  have  the  disease  in  New 
England,  —  but  not  the  hospitals.  I  don't  like  to 
think  of  it.  I  will  not  believe  our  young  Iris  is  going 
to  die  out  in  this  way.  Providence  will  find  her  some 
great  happiness,  or  affliction,  or  duty,  —  and  which 
would  be  best  for  her,  I  cannot  tell.  One  thing  is 
sure:  the  interest  she  takes  in  her  little  neighbor  is 
getting  to  be  more  engrossing  than  ever.  Something 
is  the  matter  with  him,  and  she  knows  it,  and  I  think 
worries  herself  about  it. 

I  wonder  sometimes  how  so  fragile  and  distorted  a 
frame  has  kept  the  fiery  spirit  that  inhabits  it  so  long 
its  tenant.  He  accounts  for  it  in  his  own  way. 

The  air  of  the  Old  World  is  good  for  nothing,  — 
he  said,  one  day.  —  Used  up,  Sir,  —  breathed  over 
and  over  again.  You  must  come  to  this  side,  Sir, 


250   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

for  an  atmosphere  fit  to  breathe  nowadays.  Did  not 
worthy  Mr.  Higginson  say  that  a  breath  of  New  Eng 
land's  air  is  better  than  a  sup  of  Old  England's  ale? 
I  ought  to  have  died  when  I  was  a  boy,  Sir ;  but  I 
could  n't  die  in  this  Boston  air,  —  and  I  think  I  shall 
have  to  go  to  New  York  one  of  these  days,  when  it 's 
time  for  me  to  drop  this  bundle,  —  or  to  New  Orleans, 
where  they  have  the  yellow  fever,  —  or  to  Philadel 
phia,  where  they  have  so  many  doctors. 

This  was  some  time  ago ;  but  of  late  he  has  seemed, 
as  I  have  before  said,  to  be  ailing.  An  experienced 
eye,  such  as  I  think  I  may  call  mine,  can  tell  com 
monly  whether  a  man  is  going  to  die,  or  not,  long 
before  he  or  his  friends  are  alarmed  about  him.  I 
don't  like  it. 

Iris  has  told  me  that  the  Scottish  gift  of  second-sight 
runs  in  her  family,  and  that  she  is  afraid  she  has  it. 
Those  who  are  so  endowed  look  upon  a  well  man  and 
see  a  shroud  wrapt  about  him.  According  to  the  de 
gree  to  which  it  covers  him,  his  death  will  be  near  or 
more  remote.  It  is  an  awful  faculty;  but  science 
gives  one  too  much  like  it.  Luckily  for  our  friends, 
most  of  us  who  have  the  scientific  second-sight  school 
ourselves  not  to  betray  our  knowledge  by  word  or 
look. 

Day  by  day,  as  the  Little  Gentleman  comes  to  the 
table,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  shadow  of  some  ap 
proaching  change  falls  darker  and  darker  over  his 
countenance.  Nature  is  struggling  with  something, 
and  I  am  afraid  she  is  under  in  the  wrestling-match. 
You  do  not  care  much,  perhaps,  for  my  particular  con 
jectures  as  to  the  nature  of  his  difficulty.  I  should 
say,  however,  from  the  sudden  flushes  to  which  he  is 
subject,  and  certain  other  marks  which,  as  an  expert, 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    251 

I  know  how  to  interpret,  that  his  heart  was  in  trou 
ble  ;  but  then  he  presses  his  hand  to  the  right  side,  as 
if  there  were  the  centre  of  his  uneasiness. 

When  I  say  difficulty  about  the  heart,  I  do  not 
mean  any  of  those  sentimental  maladies  of  that  organ 
which  figure  more  largely  in  romances  than  on  the 
returns  which  furnish  our  Bills  of  Mortality.  I  mean 
some  actual  change  in  the  organ  itself,  which  may 
carry  him  off  by  slow  and  painful  degrees,  or  strike 
him  down  with  one  huge  pang  and  only  time  for  a 
single  shriek,  —  as  when  the  shot  broKe  through  the 
brave  Captain  Nolan's  breast,  at  the  head  of  the  Light 
Brigade  at  Balaklava,  and  with  a  loud  cry  he  dropped 
dead  from  his  saddle. 

I  thought  it  only  fair  to  say  something  of  what  I 
apprehended  to  some  who  were  entitled  to  be  warned. 
The  landlady's  face  fell  when  I  mentioned  my  fears. 

Poor  man !  —  she  said.  —  And  will  leave  the  best 
room  empty !  Has  n't  he  got  any  sisters  or  nieces 
or  anybody  to  see  to  his  things,  if  he  should  be  took 
away?  Such  a  sight  of  cases,  full  of  everything ! 
Never  thought  of  his  faiiin'  so  suddin.  A  compli 
cation  of  diseases,  she  expected.  Liver-complaint 
one  of  'em? 

After  this  first  involuntary  expression  of  the  too 
natural  selfish  feelings,  (which  we  must  not  judge  very 
harshly,  unless  we  happen  to  be  poor  widows  our 
selves,  with  children  to  keep  filled,  covered,  and 
taught,  —  rents  high,  —  beef  eighteen  to  twenty  cents 
per  pound,)  —  after  this  first  squeak  of  selfishness,  fol 
lowed  by  a  brief  movement  of  curiosity,  so  invariable 
in  mature  females,  as  to  the  nature  of  the  complaint 
which  threatens  the  life  of  a  friend  or  any  person  who 
may  happen  to  be  mentioned  as  ill,  —  the  worthy 


252    THE   PROFESSOR  AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

soul's  better  feelings  struggled  up  to  the  surface,  and 
she  grieved  for  the  doomed  invalid,  until  a  tear  or  two 
came  forth  and  found  their  way  down  a  channel  worn 
for  them  since  the  early  days  of  her  widowhood. 

Oh,  this  dreadful,  dreadful  business  of  being  the 
prophet  of  evil !  Of  all  the  trials  which  those  who 
take  charge  of  others'  health  and  lives  have  to  un 
dergo,  this  is  the  most  painful.  It  is  all  so  plain  to 
the  practised  eye !  —  and  there  is  the  poor  wife,  the 
doting  mother,  who  has  never  suspected  anything,  or 
at  least  has  clung  always  to  the  hope  which  you  are 
just  going  to  wrench  away  from  her !  —  I  must  tell  Iris 
that  I  think  her  poor  friend  is  in  a  precarious  state. 
She  seems  nearer  to  him  than  anybody. 

I  did  tell  her.  Whatever  emotion  it  produced,  she 
kept  a  still  face,  except,  perhaps,  a  little  trembling 
of  the  lip.  —  Could  I  be  certain  that  there  was  any 
mortal  complaint  ?  —  Why,  no,  I  could  not  be  certain ; 
but  it  looked  alarming  to  me.  — He  shall  have  some 
of  my  life,  —  she  said. 

I  suppose  this  to  liave  been  a  fancy  of  hers,  or  a 
kind  of  magnetic  power  she  could  give  out ;  —  at  any 
rate,  I  cannot  help  thinking  she  wills  her  strength 
away  from  herself,  for  she  has  lost  vigor  and  color 
from  that  day.  I  have  sometimes  thought  he  gained 
the  force  she  lost;  but  this  may  have  been  a  whim, 
very  probably. 

One  day  she  came  suddenly  to  me,  looking  deadly 
pale.  Her  lips  moved,  as  if  she  were  speaking;  but 
I  could  not  at  first  hear  a  word.  Her  hair  looked 
strangely,  as  if  lifting  itself,  and  her  eyes  were  full  of 
wild  light.  She  sunk  upon  a  chair,  and  I  thought  was 
falling  into  one  of  her  trances.  Something  had  frozen 
her  blood  with  fear;  I  thought,  from  what  she  said, 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    253 

half  audibly,  that  she  believed  she  had  seen  a  shrouded 
figure. 

That  night,  at  about  eleven  o'clock,  I  was  sent  for 
to  see  the  Little  Gentleman,  who  was  taken  suddenly 
ill.  Bridget,  the  servant,  went  before  me  with  a 
light.  The  doors  were  both  unfastened,  and  I  found 
myself  ushered,  without  hindrance,  into  the  dim  light 
of  the  mysterious  apartment  I  had  so  longed  to  enter. 

I  found  these  stanzas  in  the  young  girl's  book 
among  many  others.  I  give  them  as  characterizing 
the  tone  of  her  sadder  moments. 

UNDER  THE  VIOLETS. 

Her  hands  are  cold  ;  her  face  is  white  ; 

No  more  her  pulses  come  and  go  ; 
Her  eyes  are  shut  to  life  and  light  ;  — 

Fold  the  white  vesture,  snow  on  snow, 

And  lay  her  where  the  violets  blow. 

But  not  beneath  a  graven  stone, 

To  plead  for  tears  with  alien  eyes  ; 
A  slender  cross  of  wood  alone 

Shall  say,  that  here  a  maiden  lies 

In  peace  beneath  the  peaceful  skies. 

And  gray  old  trees  of  hugest  limb 

Shall  wheel  their  circling  shadows  round 

To  make  the  scorching  sunlight  dim 

That  drinks  the  greenness  from  the  ground, 
And  drop  their  dead  leaves  on  her  mound. 

When  o'er  their  boughs  the  squirrels  run, 
And  through  their  leaves  the  robins  call, 

And,  ripening  in  the  autumn  sun, 
The  acorns  and  the  chestnuts  fall, 
Doubt  not  that  she  will  heed  them  all. 


254    THE  PROFESSOE  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

For  her  the  morning  choir  shall  sing 
Its  matins  from  the  branches  high, 

And  every  minstrel  voice  of  spring, 
That  trills  beneath  the  April  sky, 
Shall  greet  her  with  its  earliest  cry. 

When,  turning  round  their  dial-track, 
Eastward  the  lengthening  shadows  pass, 

Her  little  mourners,  clad  in  black, 

The  crickets,  sliding  through  the  grass, 
Shall  pipe  for  her  an  evening  mass. 

At  last  the  rootlets  of  the  trees 

Shall  find  the  prison  where  she  lies, 

And  bear  the  buried  dust  they  seize 
In  leaves  and  blossoms  to  the  skies. 
So  may  the  soul  that  warmed  it  rise  ! 

If  any,  born  of  kindlier  blood, 

Should  ask,  What  maiden  lies  below  ? 

Say  only  this  :  A  tender  bud, 

That  tried  to  blossom  in  the  snow, 
Lies  withered  where  the  violets  blow. 


XL 

You  will  know,  perhaps,  in  the  course  of  half  an 
hour's  reading,  what  has  been  haunting  my  hours  of 
sleep  and  waking  for  months.  I  cannot  tell,  of  course, 
whether  you  are  a  nervous  person  or  not.  If,  how 
ever,  you  are  such  a  person,  —  if  it  is  late  at  night, 

—  if  all  the  rest  of  the  household  have  gone  off  to  bed, 

—  if  the  wind  is  shaking  your  windows  as  if  a  human 
hand  were  rattling  the  sashes,  —  if  your  candle  or 
lamp  is  low  and  will  soon  burn  out,  —  let  me  advise 
you  to  take  up  some  good  quiet  sleepy  volume,  or  at 
tack  the  "Critical  Notices"  of  the  last  Quarterly  and 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    255 

leave  this  to  be  read  by  daylight,  with  cheerful  voices 
round,  and  people  near  by  who  would  hear  you,  if  you 
slid  from  your  chair  and  came  down  in  a  lump  on  the 
floor. 

I  do  not  say  that  your  heart  will  beat  as  mine  did, 
I  am  willing  to  confess,  when  I  entered  the  dim 
chamber.  Did  I  not  tell  you  that  I  was  sensitive  and 
imaginative,  and  that  I  had  lain  awake  with  thinking 
what  were  the  strange  movements  and  sounds  which  I 
heard  late  at  night  in  my  little  neighbor's  apartment? 
It  had  come  to  that  pass  that  I  was  truly  unable  to 
separate  what  I  had  really  heard  from  what  I  had 
dreamed  in  those  nightmares  to  which  I  have  been  sub 
ject,  as  before  mentioned.  So,  when  I  walked  into 
the  room,  and  Bridget,  turning  back,  closed  the  door 
and  left  me  alone  with  its  tenant,  I  do  believe  you 
could  have  grated  a  nutmeg  on  my  skin,  such  a 
"goose-flesh  "  shiver  ran  over  it.  It  was  not  fear,  but 
what  I  call  nervousness,  —  unreasoning,  but  irresist 
ible;  as  when,  for  instance,  one  looking  at  the  sun 
going  down  says,  "I  will  count  fifty  before  it  disap 
pears";  and  as  he  goes  on  and  it  becomes  doubtful 
whether  he  will  reach  the  number,  he  gets  strangely 
flurried,  and  his  imagination  pictures  life  and  death 
and  heaven  and  hell  as  the  issues  depending  on  the 
completion  or  non-completion  of  the  fifty  he  is  count 
ing.  Extreme  curiosity  will  excite  some  people  as 
much  as  fear,  or  what  resembles  fear,  acts  on  some 
other  less  impressible  natures. 

I  may  find  myself  in  the  midst  of  strange  facts  in 
this  little  conjurer's  room.  Or,  again,  there  may  be 
nothing  in  this  poor  invalid's  chamber  but  some  old 
furniture,  such  as  they  say  came  over  in  the  May 
flower.  All  this  is  just  what  I  mean  to  find  out  while 


256    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I  am  looking  at  the  Little  Gentleman,  who  has  sud 
denly  become  my  patient.  The  simplest  things  turn 
out  to  be  unfathomable  mysteries ;  the  most  mysterious 
appearances  prove  to  be  the  most  commonplace  objects 
in  disguise. 

I  wonder  whether  the  boys  who  live  in  Roxbury  and 
Dorchester  are  ever  moved  to  tears  or  filled  with  silent 
awe  as  they  look  upon  the  rocks  and  fragments  of 
"puddingstone"  abounding  in  those  localities.  I 
have  my  suspicions  that  those  boys  "heave  a  stone" 
or  "fire  a  brickbat,"  composed  of  the  conglomerate 
just  mentioned,  without  any  more  tearful  or  philo 
sophical  contemplations  than  boys  of  less  favored  re 
gions  expend  on  the  same  performance.  Yet  a  lump 
c.f  puddingstone  is  a  thing  to  look  at,  to  think  about, 
to  study  over,  to  dream  upon,  to  go  crazy  with,  to  beat 
one's  brains  out  against.  Look  at  that  pebble  in  it. 
From  what  cliff  was  it  broken?  On  what  beach  rolled 
by  the  waves  of  what  ocean?  How  and  when  imbed 
ded  in  soft  ooze,  which  itself  became  stone,  and  by- 
and-by  was  lifted  into  bald  summits  and  steep  cliffs, 
such  as  you  may  see  on  Meetinghouse-Hill  any  day 
—  yes,  and  mark  the  scratches  on  their  faces  left  when 
the  boulder-carrying  glaciers  planed  the  surface  of  the 
continent  with  such  rough  tools  that  the  storms  have 
not  worn  the  marks  out  of  it  with  all  the  polishing  of 
ever  so  many  thousand  years? 

Or  as  you  pass  a  roadside  ditch  or  pool  in  spring 
time,  take  from  it  any  bit  of  stick  or  straw  which  has 
lain  undisturbed  for  a  time.  Some  little  worm-shaped 
masses  of  clear  jelly  containing  specks  are  fastened  to 
the  stick:  eggs  of  a  small  snail-like  shell-fish.  One 
of  these  specks  magnified  proves  to  be  a  crystalline 
sphere  with  an  opaque  mass  in  its  centre.  And  while 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    257 

you  are  looking,  the  opaque  mass  begins  to  stir,  and 
by-and-by  slowly  to  turn  upon  its  axis  like  a  forming 
planet,  —  life  beginning  in  the  microcosm,  as  in  the 
great  worlds  of  the  firmament,  with  the  revolution  that 
turns  the  surface  in  ceaseless  round  to  the  source  of 
life  and  light. 

A  pebble  and  the  spawn  of  a  mollusk  !  Before  you 
have  solved  their  mysteries,  this  earth  where  you  first 
saw  them  may  be  a  vitrified  slag,  or  a  vapor  diffused 
through  the  planetary  spaces.  Mysteries  are  common 
enough,  at  any  rate,  whatever  the  boys  in  Roxbury 
and  Dorchester  think  of  "brickbats"  and  the  spawn 
of  creatures  that  live  in  roadside  puddles. 

But  then  a  great  many  seeming  mysteries  are  rela 
tively  perfectly  plain,  when  we  can  get  at  them  so  as 
to  turn  them  over.  How  many  ghosts  that  "thick 
men's  blood  with  cold  "  prove  to  be  shirts  hung  out  to 
dry !  How  many  mermaids  have  been  made  out  of 
seals!  How  many  times  have  horse-mackerels  been 
taken  for  the  sea-serpent ! 

—  Let  me  take  the  whole  matter  coolly,  while  I  see 
what  is  the  matter  with  the  patient.  That  is  what 
I  say  to  myself,  as  I  draw  a  chair  to  the  bedside.  — 
The  bed  is  an  old-fashioned,  dark  mahogany  four- 
poster.  It  was  never  that  which  made  the  noise  of 
something  moving.  It  is  too  heavy  to  be  pushed 
about  the  room.  — The  Little  Gentleman  was  sitting, 
bolstered  up  by  pillows,  with  his  hands  clasped  and 
their  united  palms  resting  on  the  back  of  the  head,  — 
one  of  the  three  or  four  positions  specially  affected  by 
persons  whose  breathing  is  difficult  from  disease  of  the 
heart  or  other  causes. 

Sit  down,  Sir,  —  he  said,  —  sit  down  !  I  have  come 
to  the  hill  Difficulty,  Sir,  and  am  fighting  my  way  up. 
—  His  speech  was  laborious  and  interrupted. 


258  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Don't  talk,  — I  said,  — except  to  answer  my  ques 
tions. —  And  I  proceeded  to  "prospect"  for  the 
marks  of  some  local  mischief,  which  you  know  is  at 
the  bottom  of  all  these  attacks,  though  we  do  not 
always  find  it.  I  suppose  I  go  to  work  pretty  much 
like  other  professional  folks  of  my  temperament., 
Thus:- 

Wrist,  if  you  please.  —  I  was  on  his  right  side,  but 
he  presented  his  left  wrist,  crossing  it  over  the  other. 

—  I   begin   to   count,   holding  watch   in  left  hand. 
One,  two,  three,  four,  — What  a  handsome  hand  ! — 
wonder  if  that  splendid  stone  is  a  carbuncle.  —  One, 
two,  three,  four,  five,  six,  seven, — Can't  see  much, 
it  is  so  dark,  except  one  white  object.  —  One,  two, 
three,  four,  —  Hang  it !  eighty  or  ninety  in  the  min 
ute,  I  guess.  —  Tongue,   if  you  please.  —  Tongue  is 
put  out.     Forget  to  look  at  it,   or,  rather,   to  take 
any  particular  notice  of  it ;  —  but  what  is  that  white 
object,  with  the  long  arm  stretching  up  as  if  pointing 
to  the  sky,  just  as  Vesalius  and  Spigelius  and  those 
old  fellows  used  to  put  their   skeletons?      I   don't 
think  anything  of  such  objects,  you  know;  but  what 
should  he  have  it  in  his  chamber  for  ?  —  As  I  had 
found  his  pulse  irregular  and  intermittent,  I  took  out 
a  stethoscope,  which  is  a  pocket-spyglass  for  looking 
into  people's  chests  with  your  ears,  and  laid  it  over 
the  place  where  the  heart  beats.     I  missed  the  usual 
beat  of  the  organ.  — How  is  this? —  I  said,  — where 
is  your  heart  gone  to  ?  —  He  took  the  stethoscope  and 
shifted  it  across  to  the  right  side ;  there  was  a  dis 
placement  of  the  organ.  —  I  am  ill-packed,  —  he  said ; 

—  there  was  no  room  for  my  heart  in  its  place  as  it 
is  with  other  men.  —  God  help  him  ! 

It  is  hard  to  draw  the  line  between  scientific  curios- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    259 

ity  and  the  desire  for  the  patient's  sake  to  learn  all 
the  details  of  his  condition.  I  must  look  at  this 
patient's  chest,  and  thump  it  and  listen  to  it.  For 
this  is  a  case  of  ectopia  cordis,  my  boy, —  displacement 
of  the  heart ;  and  it  is  n't  every  day  you  get  a  chance 
to  overhaul  such  an  interesting  malformation.  And  so 
I  managed  to  do  my  duty  and  satisfy  my  curiosity  at 
the  same  time.  The  torso  was  slight  and  deformed ; 
the  right  arm  attenuated,  —  the  left  full,  round,  and 
of  perfect  symmetry.  It  had  run  away  with  the  life 
of  the  other  limbs,  —  a  common  trick  enough  of  Na 
ture's,  as  I  told  you  before.  If  you  see  a  man  with 
legs  withered  from  childhood,  keep  out  of  the  way  of 
his  arms,  if  you  have  a  quarrel  with  him.  He  has  the 
strength  of  four  limbs  in  two ;  and  if  he  strikes  you, 
it  is  an  arm-blow  plus  a  kick  administered  from  the 
shoulder  instead  of  the  haunch,  where  it  should  have 
started  from. 

Still  examining  him  as  a  patient,  I  kept  my  eyes 
about  me  to  search  all  parts  of  the  chamber  and  went 
on  with  the  double  process,  as  before.  —  Heart  hits  as 
hard  as  a  fist,  —  bellows-sound  over  mitral  valves  (pro 
fessional  terms  you  need  not  attend  to).  —  What  the 
deuse  is  that  long  case  for?  Got  his  witch  grand 
mother  mummied  in  it?  And  three  big  mahogany 
presses,  —  hey  ?  —  A  diabolical  suspicion  came  over 
me  which  I  had  had  once  before,  —  that  he  might  be 
one  of  our  modern  alchemists,  —  you  understand,  — 
make  gold,  you  know,  or  what  looks  like  it,  sometimes 
with  the  head  of  a  king  or  queen  or  of  Liberty  to 
embellish  one  side  of  the  piece.  —  Don't  I  remember 
hearing  him  shut  a  door  and  lock  it  once  ?  What  do 
you  think  was  kept  under  that  lock?  Let 's  have  an 
other  look  at  his  hand,  to  see  if  there  are  any  calluses. 


260    THE   PKOFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

One  can  tell  a  man's  business,  if  it  is  a  handicraft, 
very  often  by  just  taking  a  look  at  his  open  hand.  — 
Ah !  Four  calluses  at  the  end  of  the  fingers  of  the 
right  hand.  None  on  those  of  the  left.  Ah,  ha ! 
What  do  those  mean? 

All  this  seems  longer  in  the  telling,  of  course,  than 
it  was  in  fact.  While  I  was  making  these  observa 
tions  of  the  objects  around  me,  I  was  also  forming  my 
opinion  as  to  the  kind  of  case  with  which  I  had  to 
deal. 

There  are  three  wicks,  you  know,  to  the  lamp  of  a 
man's  life :  brain,  blood,  and  breath.  Press  the  brain 
a  little,  its  light  goes  out,  followed  by  both  the  others. 
Stop  the  heart  a  minute  and  out  go  all  three  of  the 
wicks.  Choke  the  air  out  of  the  lungs,  and  presently 
the  fluid  ceases  to  supply  the  other  centres  of  flame, 
and  all  is  soon  stagnation,  cold,  and  darkness.  The 
"tripod  of  life"  a  French  physiologist  called  these 
three  organs.  It  is  all  clear  enough  which  leg  of  the 
tripod  is  going  to  break  down  here.  I  could  tell  you 
exactly  what  the  difficulty  is ;  —  which  would  be  as 
intelligible  and  amusing  as  a  watchmaker's  descrip 
tion  of  a  diseased  timekeeper  to  a  ploughman.  It 
is  enough  to  say,  that  I  found  just  what  I  expected 
to,  and  that  I  think  this  attack  is  only  the  prelude 
of  more  serious  consequences,  —  which  expression 
means  you  very  well  know  what. 

And  now  the  secrets  of  this  life  hanging  on  a  thread 
must  surely  come  out.  If  I  have  made  a  mystery 
where  there  was  none,  my  suspicions  will  be  shamed, 
as  they  have  often  been  before.  If  there  is  anything 
strange,  my  visits  will  clear  it  up. 

I  sat  an  hour  or  two  by  the  side  of  the  Little  Gen 
tleman's  bed,  after  giving  him  some  henbane  to  quiet 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    261 

his  brain,  and  some  foxglove,  which  an  imaginative 
French  professor  has  called  the  "Opium  of  the  Heart." 
Under  their  influence  he  gradually  fell  into  an  uneasy, 
half -waking  slumber,  the  body  fighting  hard  for  every 
breath,  and  the  mind  wandering  off  in  strange  fancies 
and  old  recollections,  which  escaped  from  his  lips  in 
broken  sentences. 

—  The  last  of  'em,  — he  said,  — the  last  of  'em  all, 

—  thank  God !     And  the  grave  he  lies  in  will  look 
just  as  well  as  if  he  had  been  straight.     Dig  it  deep, 
old  Martin,  dig  it  deep,  —  and  let  it  be  as  long  as 
other  folks'  graves.     And  mind  you  get  the  sods  flat, 
old  man,  —  flat  as  ever  a  straight-backed  young  fel 
low  was  laid  under.     And  then,  with  a  good  tall  slab 
at  the  head,  and  a  foot-stone  six  foot  away  from  it, 
it  '11  look  just  as  if  there  was  a  man  underneath. 

A  man !  Who  said  he  was  a  man  ?  No  more  men 
of  that  pattern  to  bear  his  name !  —  Used  to  be  a  good- 
looking  set  enough.  —  Where  's  all  the  manhood  and 
womanhood  gone  to  since  his  great-grandfather  was 
the  strongest  man  that  sailed  out  of  the  town  of  Bos 
ton,  and  poor  Leah  there  the  handsomest  woman  in 
Essex,  if  she  was  a  witch? 

—  Give  me  some  light,  —  he  said,  —  more  light.  — 
I  want  to  see  the  picture. 

He  had  started  either  from  a  dream  or  a  wandering 
reverie.  I  was  not  unwilling  to  have  more  light  in 
the  apartment,  and  presently  had  lighted  an  astral 
lamp  that  stood  on  a  table.  —  He  pointed  to  a  portrait 
hanging  against  the  wall.  —  Look  at  her,  —  he  said, 

—  look  at  her!     Wasn't  that  a  pretty  neck  to  slip  a 
hangman's  noose  over? 

The  portrait  was  of  a  young  woman,  something 
more  than  twenty  years  old,  perhaps.  There  were 


262   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

few  pictures  of  any  merit  painted  in  New  England  be. 
fore  the  time  of  Smibert,  and  I  am  at  a  loss  to  know 
what  artist  could  have  taken  this  half-length,  which 
was  evidently  from  life.  It  was  somewhat  stiff  and 
flat,  but  the  grace  of  the  figure  and  the  sweetness  of 
the  expression  reminded  me  of  the  angels  of  the  early 
Florentine  painters.  She  must  have  been  of  some 
consideration,  for  she  was  dressed  in  paduasoy  and 
lace  with  hanging  sleeves,  and  the  old  carved  frame 
showed  how  the  picture  had  been  prized  by  its  former 
owners.  A  proud  eye  she  had,  with  all  her  sweetness. 

—  I  think  it  was  that  which  hanged  her,  as  his  strong 
arm  hanged  Minister  George  Burroughs ;  —  but  it  may 
have  been  a  little  mole  on  one  cheek,  which  the  artist 
had  just  hinted  as  a  beauty  rather  than  a  deformity. 
You  know,  I  suppose,  that  nursling  imps  addict  them 
selves,  after  the  fashion  of  young  opossums,  to  these 
little  excrescences.     "Witch-marks"  were  good  evi 
dence  that  a  young  woman  was  one  of  the  Devil's  wet- 
nurses  ;  —  I  should  like  to  have  seen  you  make  fun  of 
them  in  those  days !  —  Then  she  had  a  brooch  in  her 
bodice,  that  might  have  been  taken  for  some  devilish 
amulet  or  other ;  and  she  wore  a  ring  upon  one  of  her 
fingers,  with  a  red  stone  in  it,  that  flamed  as  if  the 
painter  had  dipped  his  pencil  in  fire;  —  who  knows 
but  that  it  was  given  her  by  a  midnight  suitor  fresh 
from  that  fierce  element,  and  licensed  for  a  season  to 
leave  his  couch  of   flame  to  tempt  the  unsanctified 
hearts  of  earthly  maidens  and  brand  their  cheeks  with 
the  print  of  his  scorching  kisses  ? 

She  and  I,  —  he  said,  as  he  looked  steadfastly  at 
the  canvas,  —  she  and  I  are  the  last  of  'em.  —  She 
will  stay,  and  I  shall  go.  They  never  painted  me, 

—  except  when  the  boys  used  to  make  pictures  of  me 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    263 

with  chalk  on  the  board-fences.  They  said  the  doc 
tors  would  want  my  skeleton  when  I  was  dead.  —  You 
are  my  friend,  if  you  are  a  doctor,  — a'n't  you? 

I  just  gave  him  my  hand.  I  had  not  the  heart  to 
speak. 

I  want  to  lie  still,  —  he  said,  —  after  I  am  put  to 
bed  upon  the  hill  yonder.  Can't  you  have  a  great 
stone  laid  over  me,  as  they  did  over  the  first  settlers 
in  the  old  burying-ground  at  Dorchester,  so  as  to  keep 
the  wolves  from  digging  them  up  ?  I  never  slept  easy 
over  the  sod ;  —  I  should  like  to  lie  quiet  under  it. 
And  besides,  —  he  said,  in  a  kind  of  scared  whis 
per,  —  I  don't  want  to  have  my  bones  stared  at,  as 
my  body  has  been.  I  don't  doubt  I  was  a  remarkable 
case ;  but,  for  God's  sake,  oh,  for  God's  sake,  don't 
let  'em  make  a  show  of  the  cage  I  have  been  shut 
up  in  and  looked  through  the  bars  of  for  so  many 
years ! 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  the  art  of  healing  makes 
men  hard-hearted  and  indifferent  to  human  suffering. 
I  am  willing  to  own  that  there  is  often  a  professional 
hardness  in  surgeons,  just  as  there  is  in  theologians, 
—  only  much  less  in  degree  than  in  these  last.  It  does 
not  commonly  improve  the  sympathies  of  a  man  to  be 
in  the  habit  of  thrusting  knives  into  his  fellow-crea 
tures  and  burning  them  with  red-hot  irons,  any  more 
than  it  improves  them  to  hold  the  blinding-white  cau 
tery  of  Gehenna  by  its  cool  handle  and  score  and  crisp 
young  souls  with  it  until  they  are  scorched  into  the 
belief  of  —  Transubstantiation  or  the  Immaculate 
Conception.  And,  to  say  the  plain  truth,  I  think 
there  are  a  good  many  coarse  people  in  both  callings. 
A  delicate  nature  will  not  commonly  choose  a  pursuit 
which  implies  the  habitual  infliction  of  suffering,  so 


264   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

readily  as  some  gentler  office.  Yet,  while  I  am  writ 
ing  this  paragraph,  there  passes  by  my  window,  on 
his  daily  errand  of  duty,  not  seeing  me,  though  I 
catch  a  glimpse  of  his  manly  features  through  the 
oval  glass  of  his  chaise,  as  he  drives  by,  a  surgeon  of 
skill  and  standing,  so  friendly,  so  modest,  so  tender 
hearted  in  all  his  ways,  that,  if  he  had  not  approved 
himself  at  once  adroit  and  firm,  one  would  have  said 
he  was  of  too  kindly  a  mould  to  be  the  minister  of 
pain,  even  if  he  were  saving  pain.1 

You  may  be  sure  that  some  men,  even  among  those 
who  have  chosen  the  task  of  pruning  their  fellow- 
creatures,  grow  more  and  more  thoughtful  and  truly 
compassionate  in  the  midst  of  their  cruel  experience. 
They  become  less  nervous,  but  more  sympathetic. 
They  have  a  truer  sensibility  for  others'  pain,  the 
more  they  study  pain  and  disease  in  the  light  of  sci 
ence.  I  have  said  this  without  claiming  any  special 
growth  in  humanity  for  myself,  though  I  do  hope  I 
grow  tenderer  in  my  feelings  as  I  grow  older.  At  any 
rate,  this  was  not  a  time  in  which  professional  habits 
could  keep  down  certain  instincts  of  older  date  than 
these. 

This  poor  little  man's  appeal  to  my  humanity 
against  the  supposed  rapacity  of  Science,  which  he 
feared  would  have  her  "specimen,"  if  his  ghost 
should  walk  restlessly  a  thousand  years,  waiting  for 
his  bones  to  be  laid  in  the  dust,  touched  my  heart. 
But  I  felt  bound  to  speak  cheerily. 

—  We  won't  die  yet  awhile,  if  we  can  help  it,  —  I 
said,  —  and  I  trust  we  can  help  it.  But  don't  be 
afraid ;  if  I  live  longest,  I  will  see  that  your  resting- 

1  The  surgeon  referred  to  was  the  late  Solomon  Davis  Towns- 
end,  M.  D. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    265 

place  is  kept  sacred  till  the  dandelions  and  buttercups 
blow  over  you. 

He  seemed  to  have  got  his  wits  together  by  this 
time,  and  to  have  a  vague  consciousness  that  he  might 
have  been  saying  more  than  he  meant  for  anybody's 
ears. — I  have  been  talking  a  little  wild,  Sir,  eh?  — 
he  said.  —  There  is  a  great  buzzing  in  my  head  with 
those  drops  of  yours,  and  I  doubt  if  my  tongue  has 
not  been  a  little  looser  than  I  would  have  it,  Sir. 
But  I  don't  much  want  to  live,  Sir;  that 's  the  truth 
of  the  matter,  and  it  does  rather  please  me  to  think 
that  fifty  years  from  now  nobody  will  know  that  the 
place  where  I  lie  does  n't  hold  as  stout  and  straight  a 
man  as  the  best  of  'em  that  stretch  out  as  if  they  were 
proud  of  the  room  they  take.  You  may  get  me  well, 
if  you  can,  Sir,  if  you  think  it  worth  while  to  try; 
but  I  tell  you  there  has  been  no  time  for  this  many  a 
year  when  the  smell  of  fresh  earth  was  not  sweeter  to 
me  than  all  the  flowers  that  grow  out  of  it.  There  's 
no  anodyne  like  your  good  clean  gravel,  Sir.  But 
if  you  can  keep  me  about  awhile,  and  it  amuses  you 
to  try,  you  may  show  your  skill  upon  me,  if  you  like. 
There  is  a  pleasure  or  two  that  I  love  the  daylight 
for,  and  I  think  the  night  is  not  far  off,  at  best.  —  I 
believe  I  shall  sleep  now;  you  may  leave  me,  and 
come,  if  you  like,  in  the  morning. 

Before  I  passed  out,  I  took  one  more  glance  round 
the  apartment.  The  beautiful  face  of  the  portrait 
looked  at  me,  as  portraits  often  do,  with  a  frightful 
kind  of  intelligence  in  its  eyes.  The  drapery  flut 
tered  on  the  still  outstretched  arm  of  the  tall  object 
near  the  window ;  —  a  crack  of  this  was  open,  no 
doubt,  and  some  breath  of  wind  stirred  the  hanging 
folds.  In  my  excited  state,  I  seemed  to  see  some- 


266    THE  PEOFESSOE  AT  THE   BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

thing  ominous  in  that  arm  pointing  to  the  heavens.  I 
thought  of  the  figures  in  the  Dance  of  Death  at  Basle, 
and  that  other  on  the  panels  of  the  covered  Bridge  at 
Lucerne,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  grim  mask 
who  mingles  with  every  crowd  and  glides  over  every 
threshold  was  pointing  the  sick  man  to  his  far  home, 
and  would  soon  stretch  out  his  bony  hand  and  lead 
him  or  drag  him  on  the  unmeasured  journey  to 
wards  it. 

The  fancy  had  possession  of  me,  and  I  shivered  again 
as  when  I  first  entered  the  chamber.  The  picture  and 
the  shrouded  shape;  I  saw  only  these  two  objects. 
They  were  enough.  The  house  was  deadly  still,  and 
the  night-wind,  blowing  through  an  open  window, 
struck  me  as  from  a  field  of  ice,  at  the  moment  I 
passed  into  the  creaking  corridor.  As  I  turned  into 
the  common  passage,  a  white  figure,  holding  a  lamp, 
stood  full  before  me.  I  thought  at  first  it  was  one  of 
those  images  made  to  stand  in  niches  and  hold  a  light 
in  their  hands.  But  the  illusion  was  momentary,  and 
my  eyes  speedily  recovered  from  the  shock  of  the 
bright  flame  and  snowy  drapery  to  see  that  the  figure 
was  a  breathing  one.  It  was  Iris,  in  one  of  her  statue- 
trances.  She  had  come  down,  whether  sleeping  or 
waking,  I  knew  not  at  first,  led  by  an  instinct  that 
told  her  she  was  wanted,  —  or,  possibly,  having  over 
heard  and  interpreted  the  sound  of  our  movements, 
—  or,  it  may  be,  having  learned  from  the  servant  that 
there  was  trouble  which  might  ask  for  a  woman's 
hand.  I  sometimes  think  women  have  a  sixth  sense, 
which  tells  them  that  others,  whom  they  cannot  see  or 
hear,  are  in  suffering.  How  surely  we  find  them  at 
the  bedside  of  the  dying !  How  strongly  does  Nature 
plead  for  them,  that  we  should  draw  our  first  breath 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    267 

in  their  arms,  as  we  sigh  away  our  last  upon  their 
faithful  breasts ! 

With  white,  bare  feet,  her  hair  loosely  knotted, 
clad  as  the  starlight  knew  her,  and  the  morning  when 
she  rose  from  slumber,  save  that  she  had  twisted  a 
scarf  round  her  long  dress,  she  stood  still  as  a  stone 
before  me,  holding  in  one  hand  a  lighted  coil  of  wax- 
taper,  and  in  the  other  a  silver  goblet.  I  held  my 
own  lamp  close  to  her,  as  if  she  had  been  a  figure  of 
marble,  and  she  did  not  stir.  There  was  no  breach 
of  propriety  then,  to  scare  the  Poor  Relation  with 
and  breed  scandal  out  of.  She  had  been  "warned  in 
a  dream,"  doubtless  suggested  by  her  waking  know 
ledge  and  the  sounds  which  had  reached  her  exalted 
sense.  There  was  nothing  more  natural  than  that 
she  should  have  risen  and  girdled  her  waist,  and 
lighted  her  taper,  and  found  the  silver  goblet  with 
"Ex  dono  pupillorum"  on  it,  from  which  she  had 
taken  her  milk  and  possets  through  all  her  childish 
years,  and  so  gone  blindly  out  to  find  her  place  at 
the  bedside,  —  a  Sister  of  Charity  without  the  cap 
and  rosary;  nay,  unknowing  whither  her  feet  were 
leading  her,  and  with  wide  blank  eyes  seeing  nothing 
but  the  vision  that  beckoned  her  along.  —  Well,  I 
must  wake  her  from  her  slumber  or  trance.  —  I  called 
her  name,  but  she  did  not  heed  my  voice. 

The  Devil  put  it  into  my  head  that  I  would  kiss  one 
handsome  young  girl  before  I  died,  and  now  was  my 
chance.  She  never  would  know  it,  and  I  should  carry 
the  remembrance  of  it  with  me  into  the  grave,  and  a 
rose  perhaps  grow  out  of  my  dust,  as  a  brier  did  out 
of  Lord  Lovel's,  in  memory  of  that  immortal  mo 
ment  !  Would  it  wake  her  from  her  trance?  and 
would  she  see  me  in  the  flush  of  my  stolen  triumph, 


268  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and  hate  and  despise  me  ever  after  ?  Or  should  I 
carry  off  my  trophy  undetected,  and  always  from  that 
time  say  to  myself,  when  I  looked  upon  her  in  the  glory 
of  youth  and  the  splendor  of  beauty,  "My  lips  have 
touched  those  roses  and  made  their  sweetness  mine 
forever  "?  You  think  my  cheek  was  flushed,  perhaps, 
and  my  eyes  were  glittering  with  this  midnight  flash 
of  opportunity.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe  I  was 
pale,  very  pale,  and  I  know  that  I  trembled.  Ah,  it 
is  the  pale  passions  that  are  the  fiercest,  —  it  is  the 
violence  of  the  chill  that  gives  the  measure  of  the 
fever  I  The  fighting-boy  of  our  school  always  turned 
white  when  he  went  out  to  a  pitched  battle  with  the 
bully  of  some  neighboring  village  ;  but  we  knew  what 
his  bloodless  cheeks  meant,  —  the  blood  was  all  in  his 
stout  heart,  —  he  was  a  slight  boy,  and  there  was  not 
enough  to  redden  his  face  and  fill  his  heart  both  at 
once. 

Perhaps  it  is  making  a  good  deal  of  a  slight  matter, 
to  tell  the  internal  conflicts  in  the  heart  of  a  quiet 
person  something  more  than  juvenile  and  something 
less  than  senile,  as  to  whether  he  should  be  guilty  of 
an  impropriety,  and,  if  he  were,  whether  he  would  get 
caught  in  his  indiscretion.  And  yet  the  memory  of 
the  kiss  that  Margaret  of  Scotland  gave  to  Alain 
Chartier  has  lasted  four  hundred  years,  and  put  it  into 
the  head  of  many  an  ill-favored  poet,  whether  Victo 
ria,  or  Eugenie,  would  do  as  much  by  him,  if  she  hap 
pened  to  pass  him  when  he  was  asleep.  And  have  we 
ever  forgotten  that  the  fresh  cheek  of  the  young  John 
Milton  tingled  under  the  lips  of  some  high-born  Ital 
ian  beauty,  who,  I  believe,  did  not  think  to  leave  her 
card  by  the  side  of  the  slumbering  youth,  but  has  be 
queathed  the  memory  of  her  pretty  deed  to  all  coming 


THE  iTOOFESSOR  AT  THE  BBEAKFAST-TABLE.    269 

time  ?  The  sound  of  a  kiss  is  not  so  loud  as  that  of  a 
cannon,  but  its  echo  lasts  a  deal  longer. 

There  is  one  disadvantage  which  the  man  of  philo 
sophical  habits  of  mind  suffers,  as  compared  with  the 
man  of  action.  While  he  is  taking  an  enlarged  and 
rational  view  of  the  matter  before  him,  he  lets  his 
chance  slip  through  his  fingers.  Iris  woke  up,  of  her 
own  accord,  before  I  had  made  up  my  mind  what  I 
was  going  to  do  about  it. 

When  I  remember  how  charmingly  she  looked,  I 
don't  blame  myself  at  all  for  being  tempted;  but  if  I 
had  been  fool  enough  to  yield  to  the  impulse,  I  should 
certainly  have  been  ashamed  to  tell  of  it.  She  did 
not  know  what  to  make  of  it,  finding  herself  there 
alone,  in  such  guise,  and  me  staring  at  her.  She 
looked  down  at  her  white  robe  and  bare  feet,  and  col 
ored,  —  then  at  the  goblet  she  held  in  her  hand,  — 
then  at  the  taper ;  and  at  last  her  thoughts  seemed  to 
clear  up. 

I  know  it  all,  —  she  said.  —  He  is  going  to  die,  and 
I  must  go  and  sit  by  him.  Nobody  will  care  for  him 
as  I  shall,  and  I  have  nobody  else  to  care  for. 

I  assured  her  that  nothing  was  needed  for  him  that 
night  but  rest,  and  persuaded  her  that  the  excitement 
of  her  presence  could  only  do  harm.  Let  him  sleep, 
and  he  would  very  probably  awake  better  in  the  morn 
ing.  There  was  nothing  to  be  said,  for  I  spoke  with 
authority ;  and  the  young  girl  glided  away  with  noise 
less  step  and  sought  her  own  chamber. 

The  tremor  passed  away  from  my  limbs,  and  the 
blood  began  to  burn  in  my  cheeks.  The  beautiful 
image  which  had  so  bewitched  me  faded  gradually 
from  my  imagination,  and  I  returned  to  the  still  per 
plexing  mysteries  of  my  little  neighbor's  chamber. 


270   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

All  was  still  there  now.  No  plaintive  sounds,  no 
monotonous  murmurs,  no  shutting  of  windows  and 
doors  at  strange  hours,  as  if  something  or  somebody 
were  coming  in  or  going  out,  or  there  was  something 
to  be  hidden  in  those  dark  mahogany  presses.  Is  there 
an  inner  apartment  that  I  have  not  seen?  The  way 
in  which  the  house  is  built  might  admit  of  it.  As  I 
thought  it  over,  I  at  once  imagined  a  Bluebeard's  cham 
ber.  Suppose,  for  instance,  that  the  narrow  book 
shelves  to  the  right  are  really  only  a  masked  door, 
such  as  we  remember  leading  to  the  private  study  of 
one  of  our  most  distinguished  townsmen,  who  loved 
to  steal  away  from  his  stately  library  to  that  little 
silent  cell.  If  this  were  lighted  from  above,  a  person 
or  persons  might  pass  their  days  there  without  at 
tracting  attention  from  the  household,  and  wander 
where  they  pleased  at  night,  — to  Copp's-Hill  burial- 
ground,  if  they  liked,  —  I  said  to  myself,  laughing, 
and  pulling  the  bed-clothes  over  my  head.  There  is 
no  logic  in  superstitious  fancies  any  more  than  in 
dreams.  A  she-ghost  would  n't  want  an  inner  cham 
ber  to  herself.  A  live  woman,  with  a  valuable  so 
prano  voice,  would  n't  start  off  at  night  to  sprain  her 
ankles  over  the  old  graves  of  the  North-End  cemetery. 
It  is  all  very  easy  for  you,  middle-aged  reader,  sit 
ting  over  this  page  in  the  broad  daylight,  to  call  me 
by  all  manner  of  asinine  and  anserine  unchristian 
names,  because  I  had  these  fancies  running  through 
my  head.  I  don't  care  much  for  your  abuse.  The 
question  is  not,  what  it  is  reasonable  for  a  man  to 
think  about,  but  what  he  actually  does  think  about, 
in  the  dark,  and  when  he  is  alone,  and  his  whole 
body  seems  but  one  great  nerve  of  hearing,  and  he 
sees  the  phosphorescent  flashes  of  his  own  eyeballs  as 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    271 

they  turn  suddenly  in  the  direction  of  the  last  strange 
noise,  —  what  he  actually  does  think  about,  as  he  lies 
and  recalls  all  the  wild  stories  his  head  is  full  of,  his 
fancy  hinting  the  most  alarming  conjectures  to  account 
for  the  simplest  facts  about  him,  his  common-sense 
laughing  them  to  scorn  the  next  minute,  but  his  mind 
still  returning  to  them,  under  one  shape  or  another, 
until  he  gets  very  nervous  and  foolish,  and  remembers 
how  pleasant  it  used  to  be  to  have  his  mother  come 
and  tuck  him  up  and  go  and  sit  within  call,  so  that 
she  could  hear  him  at  any  minute,  if  he  got  very  much 
scared  and  wanted  her.  Old  babies  that  we  are ! 

Daylight  will  clear  up  all  that  lamp-light  has  left 
doubtful.  I  longed  for  the  morning  to  come,  for  I 
was  more  curious  than  ever.  So,  between  my  fancies 
and  anticipations,  I  had  but  a  poor  night  of  it,  and 
came  down  tired  to  the  breakfast-table.  My  visit 
was  not  to  be  made  until  after  this  morning  hour ;  — 
there  was  nothing  urgent,  so  the  servant  was  ordered 
to  tell  me. 

It  was  the  first  breakfast  at  which  the  high  chair  at 
the  side  of  Iris  had  been  unoccupied.  —  You  might 
jest  as  well  take  away  that  chair,  —  said  our  landlady, 
—  he  '11  never  want  it  again.  He  acts  like  a  man 
that 's  struck  with  death,  'n'  I  don't  believe  he  '11  ever 
come  out  of  his  chamber  till  he  's  laid  out  and  brought 
down  a  corpse.  —  These  good  women  do  put  things 
so  plainly !  There  were  two  or  three  words  in  her 
short  remark  that  always  sober  people,  and  suggest 
silence  or  brief  moral  reflections. 

—  Life  is  dreadful  uncerting,  —  said  the  Poor  Re 
lation,  —  and  pulled  in  her  social  tentacles  to  concen 
trate  her  thoughts  on  this  fact  of  human  history. 

—  If  there  was  anything  a  fellah  could  do,  —  said 


272   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  young  man  John,  so  called,  —  a  fellah  'd  like  the 
chance  o'  helpin'  a  little  cripple  like  that.  He  looks 
as  if  he  couldn't  turn  over  any  handier  than  a  turtle 
that 's  laid  on  his  back;  and  I  guess  there  a'n't  many 
people  tnat  know  how  to  lift  better  than  I  do.  Ask 
him  if  he  don't  want  any  watchers.  I  don't  mind 
settin'  up  any  more  'n  a  cat-owl.  I  was  up  all  night 
twice  last  month. 

[My  private  opinion  is,  that  there  was  no  small 
amount  of  punch  absorbed  on  those  two  occasions, 
which  I  think  I  heard  of  at  the  time ;  —  but  the  offer 
is  a  kind  one,  and  it  isn't  fair  to  question  how  he 
would  like  sitting  up  without  the  punch  and  the  com 
pany  and  the  songs  and  smoking.  He  means  what 
he  says,  and  it  would  be  a  more  considerable  achieve 
ment  for  him  to  sit  quietly  all  night  by  a  sick  man 
than  for  a  good  many  other  people.  I  tell  you  this 
odd  thing:  there  are  a  good  many  persons,  who, 
through  the  habit  of  making  other  folks  uncomfort 
able,  by  finding  fault  with  all  their  cheerful  enjoy 
ments,  at  last  get  up  a  kind  of  hostility  to  comfort  in 
general,  even  in  their  own  persons.  The  correlative 
to  loving  our  neighbors  as  ourselves  is  hating  ourselves 
as  we  hate  our  neighbors.  Look  at  old  misers ;  first 
they  starve  their  dependants,  and  then  themselves. 
So  I  think  it  more  for  a  lively  young  fellow  to  be 
ready  to  play  nurse  than  for  one  of  those  useful  but 
forlorn  martyrs  who  have  taken  a  spite  against  them 
selves  and  love  to  gratify  it  by  fasting  and  watching.] 

—  The  time  came  at  last  for  me  to  make  my  visit. 
I  found  Iris  sitting  by  the  Little  Gentleman's  pillow. 
To  my  disappointment,  the  room  was  darkened.  He 
did  not  like  the  light,  and  would  have  the  shutters 
kept  nearly  closed.  It  was  good  enough  for  me; — • 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    273 

what  business  had  I  to  be  indulging  my  curiosity, 
when  I  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  exercise  such  skill  as 
I  possessed  for  the  benefit  of  my  patient?  There  was 
not  much  to  be  said  or  done  in  such  a  case;  but  I 
spoke  as  encouragingly  as  I  could,  as  I  think  we  are 
always  bound  to  do.  He  did  not  seem  to  pay  any 
very  anxious  attention,  but  the  poor  girl  listened  as  if 
her  own  life  and  more  than  her  own  life  were  depend 
ing  on  the  words  I  uttered.  She  followed  me  out  of 
the  room,  when  I  had  got  through  my  visit. 

How  long  ?  —  she  said. 

Uncertain.  Any  time ;  to-day,  —  next  week,  — 
next  month,  —  I  answered.  —  One  of  those  cases 
where  the  issue  is  not  doubtful,  but  may  be  sudden 
or  slow. 

The  women  of  the  house  were  kind,  as  women  al 
ways  are  in  trouble.  But  Iris  pretended  that  nobody 
could  spare  the  time  as  well  as  she,  and  kept  her 
place,  hour  after  hour,  until  the  landlady  insisted  that 
she  'd  be  killin'  herself,  if  she  begun  at  that  rate,  'n' 
haf  to  give  up,  if  she  did  n't  want  to  be  clean  beat  out 
in  less  *n  a  week. 

At  the  table  we  were  graver  than  common.  The 
high  chair  was  set  back  against  the  wall,  and  a  gap 
left  between  that  ot  the  young  girl  and  her  nearest 
neighbor's  on  the  right.  But  the  next  morning,  to 
our  great  surprise,  that  good-looking  young  Mary- 
lander  had  very  quietly  moved  his  own  chair  to  the 
vacant  place.  I  thought  he  was  creeping  down  that 
way,  but  I  was  not  prepared  for  a  leap  spanning  such 
a  tremendous  parenthesis  of  boarders  as  this  change 
of  position  included.  There  was  no  denying  that  the 
youth  and  maiden  were  a  handsome  pair,  as  they  sat 
side  by  side.  But  whatever  the  young  girl  may  have 


274  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

thought  of  her  new  neighbor  she  never  seemed  for  a 
moment  to  forget  the  poor  little  friend  who  had  been 
taken  from  her  side.  There  are  women,  and  even 
girls,  with  whom  it  is  of  no  use  to  talk.  One  might 
as  well  reason  with  a  bee  as  to  the  form  of  his  cell,  or 
with  an  oriole  as  to  the  construction  of  his  swinging 
nest,  as  try  to  stir  these  creatures  from  their  own  way 
of  doing  their  own  work.  It  was  not  a  question  with 
Iris,  whether  she  was  entitled  by  any  special  relation 
or  by  the  fitness  of  things  to  play  the  part  of  a  nurse. 
She  was  a  wilful  creature  that  must  have  her  way  in 
this  matter.  And  it  so  proved  that  it  called  for  much 
patience  and  long  endurance  to  carry  through  the 
duties,  say  rather  the  kind  offices,  the  painful  pleasures, 
which  she  had  chosen  as  her  share  in  the  household 
where  accident  had  thrown  her.  She  had  that  genius 
of  ministration  which  is  the  special  province  of  certain 
women,  marked  even  among  their  helpful  sisters  by  a 
soft,  low  voice,  a  quiet  footfall,  a  light  hand,  a  cheer 
ing  smile,  and  a  ready  self -surrender  to  the  objects  of 
their  care,  which  such  trifles  as  their  own  food,  sleep, 
or  habits  of  any  kind  never  presume  to  interfere  with. 

Day  after  day,  and  too  often  through  the  long 
watches  of  the  night,  she  kept  her  place  by  the  pillow. 
—  That  girl  will  kill  herself  over  me,  Sir,  —  said  the 
poor  Little  Gentleman  to  me,  one  day,  —  she  will  kill 
herself,  Sir,  if  you  don't  call  in  all  the  resources  of 
your  art  to  get  me  off  as  soon  as  may  be.  I  shall 
wear  her  out,  Sir,  with  sitting  in  this  close  chamber 
and  watching  when  she  ought  to  be  sleeping,  if  you 
leave  me  to  the  care  of  Nature  without  dosing  me. 

This  was  rather  strange  pleasantry,  under  the  cir 
cumstances.  But  there  are  certain  persons  whose 
existence  is  so  out  of  parallel  with  the  larger  laws  in 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    275 

the  midst  of  which  it  is  moving,  that  life  becomes  to 
them  as  death  and  death  as  life.  —  How  am  I  get 
ting  along  ?  —  he  said,  another  morning.  He  lifted  his 
shrivelled  hand,  with  the  death's-head  ring  on  it,  and 
looked  at  it  with  a  sad  sort  of  complacency.  By  this 
one  movement,  which  I  have  seen  repeatedly  of  late,  I 
know  that  his  thoughts  have  gone  before  to  another 
condition,  and  that  he  is,  as  it  were,  looking  back  on 
the  infirmities  of  the  body  as  accidents  of  the  past. 
For,  When  he  was  well,  one  might  see  him  often 
looking  at  the  handsome  hand  with  the  flaming  jewel 
on  one  of  its  fingers.  The  single  well-shaped  limb 
was  the  source  of  that  pleasure  which  in  some  form  or 
other  Nature  almost  always  grants  to  her  least  richly 
endowed  children.  Handsome  hair,  eyes,  complex 
ion,  feature,  form,  hand,  foot,  pleasant  voice, 
strength,  grace,  agility,  intelligence,  —  how  few  there 
are  that  haye  not  just  enough  of  one  at  least  of  these 
gifts  to  show  them  that  the  good  Mother,  busy  with 
her  millions  of  children,  has  not  quite  forgotten  them ! 
But  now  he  was  thinking  of  that  other  state,  where, 
free  from  all  mortal  impediments,  the  memory  of  his 
sorrowful  burden  should  be  only  as  that  of  the  case  he 
has  shed  to  the  insect  whose  "deep-damasked  wings" 
beat  off  the  golden  dust  of  the  lily-anthers,  as  he  flut 
ters  in  the  ecstasy  of  his  new  life  over  their  full-blown 
summer  glories. 

No  human  being  can  rest  for  any  time  in  a  state  of 
equilibrium,  where  the  desire  to  live  and  that  to 
depart  just  balance  each  other.  If  one  has  a  house, 
which  he  has  lived  and  always  means  to  live  in,  he 
pleases  himself  with  the  thought  of  all  the  conven 
iences  it  offers  him,  and  thinks  little  of  its  wants  and 
imperfections.  But  once  having  made  up  his  mind  to 


276    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

move  to  a  better,  every  incommodity  starts  out  upon 
him,  until  the  very  ground-plan  of  it  seems  to  have 
changed  in  his  mind,  and  his  thoughts  and  affections, 
each  one  of  them  packing  up  its  little  bundle  of  cir 
cumstances,  have  quitted  their  several  chambers  and 
nooks  and  migrated  to  the  new  home,  long  before  its 
apartments  are  ready  to  receive  their  coming  tenant. 
It  is  so  with  the  body.  Most  persons  have  died  be 
fore  they  expire,  —  died  to  all  earthly  longings,  so  that 
the  last  breath  is  only,  as  it  were,  the  locking  of  the 
door  of  the  already  deserted  mansion.  The  fact  of 
the  tranquillity  with  which  the  great  majority  of 
dying  persons  await  this  locking  of  those  gates  of  life 
through  which  its  airy  angels  have  been  going  and 
coming,  from  the  moment  of  the  first  cry,  is  familiar 
to  those  who  have  been  often  called  upon  to  witness 
the  last  period  of  life.  Almost  always  there  is  a  prep 
aration  made  by  Nature  for  unearthing  a  soul,  just  as 
on  the  smaller  scale  there  is  for  the  removal  of  a  milk- 
tooth.  The  roots  which  hold  human  life  to  earth  are 
absorbed  before  it  is  lifted  from  its  place.  Some  of 
the  dying  are  weary  and  want  rest,  the  idea  of  whi<jh 
is  almost  inseparable  in  the  universal  mind  from 
death.  Some  are  in  pain,  and  want  to  be  rid  of  it, 
even  though  the  anodyne  be  dropped,  as  in  the  le 
gend,  from  the  sword  of  the  Death-Angel.  Some  are 
stupid,  mercifully  narcotized  that  they  may  go  to 
sleep  without  long  tossing  about.  And  some  are 
strong  in  faith  and  hope,  so  that,  as  they  draw  near 
the  next  world,  they  would  fain  hurry  toward  it,  as 
the  caravan  moves  faster  over  the  sands  when  the  fore 
most  travellers  send  word  along  the  file  that  water  is 
in  sight.  Though  each  little  party  that  follows  in  a 
foot-track  of  its  own  will  have  it  that  the  water  to 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    277 

which  others  think  they  are  hastening  is  a  mirage,  not 
the  less  has  it  been  true  in  all  ages  and  for  human 
beings  of  every  creed  which  recognized  a  future,  that 
those  who  have  fallen  worn  out  by  their  march  through 
the  Desert  have  dreamed  at  least  of  a  River  of  Life, 
and  thought  they  heard  its  murmurs  as  they  lay  dying. 

The  change  from  the  clinging  to  the  present  to  the 
welcoming  of  the  future  comes  very  soon,  for  the  most 
part,  after  all  hope  of  life  is  extinguished,  provided 
this  be  left  in  good  degree  to  Nature,  and  not  inso 
lently  and  cruelly  forced  upon  those  who  are  attacked 
by  illness,  on  the  strength  of  that  odious  foreknow 
ledge  often  imparted  by  science,  before  the  white  fruit 
whose  core  is  ashes,  and  which  we  call  death,  has  set 
beneath  the  pallid  and  drooping  flower  of  sickness. 
There  is  a  singular  sagacity  very  often  shown  in  a  pa 
tient's  estimate  of  his  own  vital  force.  His  physician 
knows  the  state  of  his  material  frame  well  enough, 
perhaps,  —  that  this  or  that  organ  is  more  or  less 
impaired  or  disintegrated ;  but  the  patient  has  a  sense 
that  he  can  hold  out  so  much  longer,  —  sometimes  that 
he  must  and  will  live  for  a  while,  though  by  the  logic 
of  disease  he  ought  to  die  without  any  delay. 

The  Little  Gentleman  continued  to  fail,  until  it 
became  plain  that  his  remaining  days  were  few.  I 
told  the  household  what  to  expect.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  kind  feeling  expressed  among  the  boarders, 
in  various  modes,  according  to  their  characters  and 
style  of  sympathy.  The  landlady  was  urgent  that  he 
should  try  a  certain  nostrum  which  had  saved  some 
body's  life  in  jest  sech  a  ca$e.  The  Poor  Relation 
wanted  me  to  carry,  as  from  her,  a  copy  of  "Allein's 
Alarm,"  etc.  I  objected  to  the  title,  reminding  her 
that  it  offended  people  of  old,  so  that  more  than  twice 


278   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as  many  of  the  book  were  sold  when  they  changed  the 
name  to  "A  Sure  Guide  to  Heaven."  The  good  old 
gentleman  whom  I  have  mentioned  before  has  come  to 
the  time  of  life  when  many  old  men  cry  easily,  and 
forget  their  tears  as  children  do.  —  He  was  a  worthy 
gentleman,  —  he  said,  —  a  very  worthy  gentleman,  but 
unfortunate, — very  unfortunate.  Sadly  deformed 
about  the  spine  and  the  feet.  Had  an  impression  that 
the  late  Lord  Byron  had  some  malformation  of  this 
kind.  Had  heerd  there  was  something  the  matter 
with  the  ankle-j'ints  of  that  nobleman,  but  he  was  a 
man  of  talents.  This  gentleman  seemed  to  be  a  man 
of  talents.  Could  not  always  agree  with  his  state 
ments,  —  thought  he  was  a  little  over-partial  to  this 
city,  and  had  some  free  opinions;  but  was  sorry  to 
lose  him,  —  and  if  —  there  was  anything  —  he  — 

could .  In  the  midst  of  these  kind 

expressions,  the  gentleman  with  the  diamond,  the 
Koh-i-noor,  as  we  called  him,  asked,  in  a  very  un 
pleasant  sort  of  way,  how  the  old  boy  was  likely  to 
cut  up,  —  meaning  what  money  our  friend  was  going 
to  leave  behind. 

The  young  fellow  John  spoke  up,  to  the  effect  that 
this  was  a  diabolish  snobby  question,  when  a  man 
was  dying  and  not  dead.  —  To  this  the  Koh-i-noor  re 
plied,  by  asking  if  the  other  meant  to  insult  him.  — 
Whereto  the  young  man  John  rejoined  that  he  had  no 
particul'r  intentions  one  way  or  t'other.  — The  Koh- 
i-noor  then  suggested  the  young  man's  stepping  out 
into  the  yard,  that  he,  the  speaker,  might  "slap  his 
chops."  —  Let  'em  alone, — said  young  Maryland, 
—  it  '11  soon  be  over,  and  they  won't  hurt  each  other 
much.  —  So  they  went  out. 

The  Koh-i-noor  entertained  the  very  common  idea, 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    279 

that,  when  one  quarrels  with  another,  the  simple  thing 
to  do  is  to  knock  the  man  down,  and  there  is  the  end 
of  it.  Now  those  who  have  watched  such  encounters 
are  aware  of  two  things :  first,  that  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
knock  a  man  down  as  it  is  to  talk  about  it ;  secondly, 
that,  if  you  do  happen  to  knock  a  man  down,  there  is 
a  very  good  chance  that  he  will  be  angry,  and  get  up 
and  give  you  a  thrashing. 

So  the  Koh-i-noor  thought  he  would  begin,  as  soon 
as  they  got  into  the  yard,  by  knocking  his  man  down, 
and  with  this  intention  swung  his  arm  round  after  the 
fashion  of  rustics  and  those  unskilled  in  the  noble  art, 
expecting  the  young  fellow  John  to  drop  when  his  fist, 
having  completed  a  quarter  of  a  circle,  should  come 
in  contact  with  the  side  of  that  young  man's  head. 
Unfortunately  for  this  theory,  it  happens  that  a  blow 
struck  out  straight  is  as  much  shorter,  and  therefore 
as  much  quicker  than  the  rustic's  swinging  blow,  as 
the  radius  is  shorter  than  the  quarter  of  a  circle.  The 
mathematical  and  mechanical  corollary  was,  that  the 
Koh-i-noor  felt  something  hard  bring  up  suddenly 
against  his  right  eye,  which  something  he  could  have 
sworn  was  a  paving-stone,  judging  by  his  sensations ; 
and  as  this  threw  his  person  somewhat  backwards, 
and  the  young  man  John  jerked  his  own  head  back  a 
little,  the  swinging  blow  had  nothing  to  stop  it;  and 
as  the  Jewel  staggered  between  the  hit  he  got  and  the 
blow  he  missed,  he  tripped  and  "went  to  grass,"  so 
far  as  the  back-yard  of  our  boarding-house  was  pro 
vided  with  that  vegetable.  It  was  a  signal  illustra 
tion  of  that  fatal  mistake,  so  frequent  in  young  and 
ardent  natures  with  inconspicuous  calves  and  negative 
pectorals,  that  they  can  settle  most  little  quarrels  on 
the  spot  by  "knocking  the  man  down." 


280  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  handling  our  faces  so  care 
fully,  that  a  heavy  blow,  taking  effect  on  that  portion 
of  the  surface,  produces  a  most  unpleasant  surprise, 
which  is  accompanied  with  odd  sensations,  as  of  see 
ing  sparks,  and  a  kind  of  electrical  or  ozone-like  odor, 
half-sulphurous  in  character,  and  which  has  given  rise 
to  a  very  vulgar  and  profane  threat  sometimes  heard 
from  the  lips  of  bullies.  A  person  not  used  to  pugil 
istic  gestures  does  not  instantly  recover  from  this  sur 
prise.  The  Koh-i-noor,  exasperated  by  his  failure, 
and  still  a  little  confused  by  the  smart  hit  he  had  re 
ceived,  but  furious,  and  confident  of  victory  over  a 
young  fellow  a  good  deal  lighter  than  himself,  made 
a  desperate  rush  to  bear  down  all  before  him  and 
finish  the  contest  at  once.  That  is  the  way  all  angry 
greenhorns  and  incompetent  persons  attempt  to  settle 
matters.  It  doesn't  do,  if  the  other  fellow  is  only 
cool,  moderately  quick,  and  has  a  very  little  science. 
It  did  n't  do  this  time ;  for,  as  the  assailant  rushed  in 
with  his  arms  flying  everywhere,  like  the  vans  of  a 
windmill,  he  ran  a  prominent  feature  of  his  face 
against  a  fist  which  was  travelling  in  the  other  direc 
tion,  and  immediately  after  struck  the  knuckles  of  the 
young  man's  other  fist  a  severe  blow  with  the  part  of 
his  person  known  as  the  epigastrium  to  one  branch  of 
science  and  the  bread-basket  to  another.  This  second 
round  closed  the  battle.  The  Koh-i-noor  had  got 
enough,  which  in  such  cases  is  more  than  as  good  as 
a  feast.  The  young  fellow  asked  him  if  he  was  sat 
isfied,  and  held  out  his  hand.  But  the  other  sulked, 
and  muttered  something  about  revenge.  —  Jest  as  ye 
like,  — said  the  young  man  John.  — Clap  a  slice  o' 
raw  beefsteak  on  to  that  mouse  o'  yours  'n'  't  '11  take 
down  the  swellin'.  (Mouse  is  a  technical  term  for  a 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    281 

bluish,  oblong,  rounded  elevation  occasioned  by  run 
ning  one's  forehead  or  eyebrow  against  another's 
knuckles.)  The  young  fellow  was  particularly  pleased 
that  he  had  had  an  opportunity  of  trying  his  profi 
ciency  in  the  art  of  self-defence  without  the  gloves. 
The  Koh-i-noor  did  not  favor  us  with  his  company  for 
a  day  or  two,  being  confined  to  his  chamber,  it  was 
said,  by  a  slight  feverish  attack.  He  was  chop-fallen 
always  after  this,  and  got  negligent  in  his  person. 
The  impression  must  have  been  a  deep  one;  for  it 
was  observed,  that,  when  he  came  down  again,  his 
moustache  and  whiskers  had  turned  visibly  white  — 
about  the  roots.  In  short,  it  disgraced  him,  and  ren 
dered  still  more  conspicuous  a  tendency  to  drinking, 
of  which  he  had  been  for  some  time  suspected.  This, 
and  the  disgust  which  a  young  lady  naturally  feels 
at  hearing  that  her  lover  has  been  "licked  by  a  fel 
lah  not  half  his  size,"  induced  the  landlady's  daugh 
ter  to  take  that  decided  step  which  produced  a  change 
in  the  programme  of  her  career  I  may  hereafter  al 
lude  to. 

I  never  thought  he  would  come  to  good,  when  I 
heard  him  attempting  to  sneer  at  an  unoffending  city 
so  respectable  as  Boston.  After  a  man  begins  to 
attack  the  State-House,  when  he  gets  bitter  about  the 
Frog-  Pond,  you  may  be  sure  there  is  not  much  left  of 
him.  Poor  Edgar  Poe  died  in  the  hospital  soon  after 
he  got  into  this  way  of  talking ;  and  so  sure  as  you 
find  an  unfortunate  fellow  reduced  to  this  pass,  you 
had  better  begin  praying  for  him,  and  stop  lending 
him  money,  for  he  is  on  his  last  legs.  Hemember 
poor  Edgar!  He  is  dead  and  gone;  but  the  State- 
House  has  its  cupola  fresh-gilded,  and  the  Frog-Pond 
has  got  a  fountain  that  squirts  up  a  hundred  feet  into 


282   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  air  and  glorifies  that  humble  sheet  with  a  fine  dis 
play  of  provincial  rainbows. 

—  I  cannot  fulfil  my  promise  in  this  number.     I 
expected  to  gratify  your   curiosity,  if   you  have  be 
come  at  all  interested  in  these  puzzles,  doubts,  fancies, 
whims,  or  whatever  you  choose  to  call  them,  of  mine. 
Next  month  you  shall  hear  all  about  it. 

—  It  was  evening,  and  I  was  going  to  the  sick- 
chamber.     As  I  paused  at  the  door  before  entering,  I 
heard  a  sweet  voice  singing.     It  was   not   the  wild 
melody  I  had  sometimes  heard  at  midnight :  —  no,  this 
was  the  voice  of  Iris,  and  I  could  distinguish  every 
word.     I  had  seen  the  verses  in  her  book ;  the  melody 
was  new  to  me.     Let  me  finish  my  page  with  them. 

HYMN  OF  TRUST. 

O  Love  Divine,  that  stooped  to  share 
Our  sharpest  pang,  our  bitterest  tear, 

On  Thee  we  cast  each  earthborn  care, 
We  smile  at  pain  while  Thou  art  near  ! 

Though  long  the  weary  way  we  tread, 
And  sorrow  crown  each  lingering  year, 

No  path  we  shun,  no  darkness  dread, 

Our  hearts  still  whispering,  Thou  art  near  ! 

When  drooping  pleasure  turns  to  grief, 
And  trembling  faith  is  changed  to  fear, 

The  murmuring  wind,  the  quivering  leaf 
Shall  softly  tell  us,  Thou  art  near  ! 

Oil  Thee  we  fling  our  burdening  woe, 

O  Love  Divine,  forever  dear, 
Content  to  suffer,  while  we  know, 

Living  and  dying,  Thou  art  near  ! 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    288 


XII. 

A  young  fellow,  born  of  good  stock,  in  one  of  the 
more  thoroughly  civilized  portions  of  these  United 
States  of  America,  bred  in  good  principles,  inheriting 
a  social  position  which  makes  him  at  his  ease  every 
where,  means  sufficient  to  educate  him  thoroughly 
without  taking  away  the  stimulus  to  vigorous  exer 
tion,  and  with  a  good  opening  in  some  honorable  path 
of  labor,  is  the  finest  sight  our  private  satellite  has  had 
the  opportunity  of  inspecting  on  the  planet  to  which 
she  belongs.  In  some  respects  it  was  better  to  be 
a  young  Greek.  If  we  may  trust  the  old  marbles,  — 
my  friend  with  his  arm  stretched  over  my  head,  above 
there,  (in  plaster  of  Paris,)  or  the  discobolus,  whom 
one  may  see  at  the  principal  sculpture  gallery  of  this 
metropolis,  —  those  Greek  young  men  were  of  su 
preme  beauty.  Their  close  curls,  their  elegantly  set 
heads,  column-like  necks,  straight  noses,  short,  curled 
lips,  firm  chins,  deep  chests,  light  flanks,  large  mus 
cles,  small  joints,  were  finer  than  anything  we  ever  see. 
It  may  well  be  questioned  whether  the  human  shape 
will  ever  present  itself  again  in  a  race  of  such  perfect 
symmetry.  But  the  life  of  the  youthful  Greek  was 
local,  not  planetary,  like  that  of  the  young  American. 
He  had  a  string  of  legends,  in  place  of  our  Gospels. 
He  had  no  printed  books,  no  newspaper,  no  steam 
caravans,  no  forks,  no  soap,  none  of  the  thousand 
cheap  conveniences  which  have  become  matters  of  ne 
cessity  to  our  modern  civilization.  Above  all  things, 
if  he  aspired  to  know  as  well  as  to  enjoy,  he  found 
knowledge  not  diffused  everywhere  about  him,  so  that 
a  day' s  labor  would  buy  him  more  wisdom  than  a  year 


284   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

could  master,  but  held  in  private  hands,  hoarded  in 
precious  manuscripts,  to  be  sought  for  only  as  gold  is 
sought  in  narrow  fissures,  and  in  the  beds  of  brawling 
streams.  Never,  since  man  came  into  this  atmosphere 
of  oxygen  and  azote,  was  there  anything  like  the  con 
dition  of  the  young  American  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury.  Having  in  possession  or  in  prospect  the  best 
part  of  half  a  world,  with  all  its  climates  and  soils  to 
choose  from ;  equipped  with  wings  of  fire  and  smoke 
that  fly  with  him  day  and  night,  so  that  he  counts  his 
journey  not  in  miles,  but  in  degrees,  and  sees  the  sea 
sons  change  as  the  wild  fowl  sees  them  in  his  annual 
flights ;  with  huge  leviathans  always  ready  to  take  him 
on  their  broad  backs  and  push  behind  them  with  their 
pectoral  or  caudal  fins  the  waters  that  seam  the  con 
tinent  or  separate  the  hemispheres;  heir  of  all  old 
civilizations,  founder  of  that  new  one  which,  if  all  the 
prophecies  of  the  human  heart  are  not  lies,  is  to  be 
the  noblest,  as  it  is  the  last;  isolated  in  space  from 
the  races  that  are  governed  by  dynasties  whose  divine 
right  grows  out  of  human  wrong,  yet  knit  into  the 
most  absolute  solidarity  with  mankind  of  all  times  and 
places  by  the  one  great  thought  he  inherits  as  his 
national  birthright ;  free  to  form  and  express  his  opin 
ions  on  almost  every  subject,  and  assured  that  he  will 
soon  acquire  the  last  franchise  which  men  withhold 
from  man,  —  that  of  stating  the  laws  of  his  spiritual 
being  and  the  beliefs  he  accepts  without  hindrance 
except  from  clearer  views  of  truth,  —  he  seems  to  want 
nothing  for  a  large,  wholesome,  noble,  beneficent  life. 
In  fact,  the  chief  danger  is  that  he  will  think  the  whole 
planet  is  made  for  him,  and  forget  that  there  are  some 
possibilities  left  in  the  debris  of  the  old-world  civili 
zation  which  deserve  a  certain  respectful  consideration 
at  his  hands. 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    285 

The  combing  and  clipping  of  this  shaggy  wild  con. 
tinent  are  in  some  measure  done  for  him  by  those  who 
have  gone  before.  Society  has  subdivided  itself 
enough  to  have  a  place  for  every  form  of  talent. 
Thus,  if  a  man  show  the  least  sign  of  ability  as  a 
sculptor  or  a  painter,  for  instance,  he  finds  the  means 
of  education  and  a  demand  for  his  services.  Even  a 
man  who  knows  nothing  but  science  will  be  provided 
for,  if  he  does  not  think  it  necessary  to*  hang  about 
his  birthplace  all  his  days,  —  which  is  a  most  un- 
American  weakness.  The  apron-strings  of  an  Amer 
ican  mother  are  made  of  India-rubber.  Her  boy 
belongs  where  he  is  wanted;  and  that  young  Mary- 
lander  of  ours  spoke  for  all  our  young  men,  when  he 
said  that  his  home  was  wherever  the  stars  and  stripes 
blew  over  his  head. 

And  that  leads  me  to  say  a  few  words  of  this  young 
gentleman,  who  made  that  audacious  movement  lately 
which  I  chronicled  in  my  last  record,  —  jumping  over 
the  seats  of  I  don't  know  how  many  boarders  to  put 
himself  in  the  place  which  the  Little  Gentleman's 
absence  had  left  vacant  at  the  side  of  Iris.  When  a 
young  man  is  found  habitually  at  the  side  of  any  one 
given  young  lady,  —  when  he  lingers  where  she  stays, 
and  hastens  when  she  leaves,  —  when  his  eyes  follow 
her  as  she  moves  and  rest  upon  her  when  she  is  still, 
—  when  he  begins  to  grow  a  little  timid,  he  who  was 
so  bold,  and  a  little  pensive,  he  who  was  so  gay,  when 
ever  accident  finds  them  alone,  —  when  he  thinks 
very  often  of  the  given  young  lady,  and  names  her 
very  seldom,  — 

What  do  you  say  about  it,  my  charming  young 
expert  in  that  sweet  science  in  which,  perhaps,  a  long 
experience  is  not  the  first  of  qualifications? 


286    THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

—  But  we  don't  know  anything  about  this  young 
man,  except  that  he  is  good-looking,  and  somewhat 
high-spirited,  and  strong-limbed,  and  has  a  gener 
ous  style  of  nature,  —  all  very  promising,  but  by 
no  means  proving  that  he  is  a  proper  lover  for  Iris, 
whose  heart  we  turned  inside  out  when  we  opened  that 
sealed  book  of  hers. 

Ah,  my  dear  young  friend !  When  your  mamma  — 
then,  if  you  will  believe  it,  a  very  slight  young  lady, 
with  very  pretty  hair  and  figure  —  came  and  told  her 

mamma  that  your  papa  had  —  had  —  asked No, 

no,  no !  she  could  n't  say  it ;  but  her  mother  —  oh  the 
depth  of  maternal  sagacity !  —  guessed  it  all  without 
another  word !  —  When  your  mother,  I  say,  came  and 
told  her  mother  she  was  engaged,  and  your  grand 
mother  told  your  grandfather,  how  much  did  they 
know  of  the  intimate  nature  of  the  young  gentleman 
to  whom  she  had  pledged  her  existence  ?  I  will  not 
be  so  hard  as  to  ask  how  much  your  respected  mamma 
knew  at  that  time  of  the  intimate  nature  of  your 
respected  papa,  though,  if  we  should  compare  a  young 
girl's  man-as-she-thinks-him  with  a  forty-summered 
matron's  mari-as-she-finds-him,  I  have  my  doubts  as 
to  whether  the  second  would  be  a  facsimile  of  the  first 
in  most  cases. 

The  idea  that  in  this  world  each  young  person  is  to 
wait  until  he  or  she  finds  that  precise  counterpart  who 
alone  of  all  creation  was  meant  for  him  or  her,  and 
then  fall  instantly  in  love  with  it,  is  pretty  enough, 
only  it  is  not  Nature's  way.  It  is  not  at  all  essential 
that  all  pairs  of  human  beings  should  be,  as  we  some 
times  say  of  particular  couples,  "born  for  each  other." 
Sometimes  a  man  or  a  woman  is  made  a  great  deal 
better  and  happier  in  the  end  for  having  had  to  con- 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    287 

quer  the  faults  of  the  one  beloved,  and  make  the  fit 
ness  not  found  at  first,  by  gradual  assimilation.  There 
is  a  class  of  good  women  who  have  no  right  to  marry 
perfectly  good  men,  because  they  have  the  power  of 
saving  those  who  would  go  to  ruin  but  for  the  guid 
ing  providence  of  a  good  wife.  I  have  known  many 
such  cases.  It  is  the  most  momentous  question  a 
woman  is  ever  called  upon  to  decide,  whether  the 
faults  of  the  man  she  loves  are  beyond  remedy  and 
will  drag  her  down,  or  whether  she  is  competent  to  be 
his  earthly  redeemer  and  lift  him  to  her  own  level. 

A  person  of  genius  should  marry  a  person  of  char 
acter.  Genius  does  not  herd  with  genius.  The  musk- 
deer  and  the  civet-cat  are  never  found  in  company. 
They  don't  care  for  strange  scents,  —  they  like  plain 
animals  better  than  perfumed  ones.  Nay,  if  you  will 
have  the  kindness  to  notice,  Nature  has  not  gifted  my 
lady  musk-deer  with  the  personal  peculiarity  by  which 
her  lord  is  so  widely  known. 

Now  when  genius  allies  itself  with  character,  the 
world  is  very  apt  to  think  character  has  the  best  of  the 
bargain.  A  brilliant  woman  marries  a  plain,  manly 
fellow,  with  a  simple  intellectual  mechanism;  —  we 
have  all  seen  such  cases.  The  world  often  stares  a 
good  deal  and  wonders.  She  should  have  taken  that 
other,  with  a  far  more  complex  mental  machinery. 
She  might  have  had  a  watch  with  the  philosophical 
compensation-balance,  with  the  metaphysical  index 
which  can  split  a  second  into  tenths,  with  the  musical 
chime  which  can  turn  every  quarter  of  an  hour  into 
melody.  She  has  chosen  a  plain  one,  that  keeps  good 
time,  and  that  is  all. 

Let  her  alone!  She  knows  what  she  is  about. 
Genius  has  an  infinitely  deeper  reverence  for  character 


288   THE   PKOFESSOK  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

than  character  can  have  for  genius.  To  be  sure,  ge 
nius  gets  the  world's  praise,  because  its  work  is  a  tan 
gible  product,  to  be  bought,  or  had  for  nothing.  It 
bribes  the  common  voice  to  praise  it  by  presents  of 
speeches,  poems,  statues,  pictures,  or  whatever  it  can 
please  with.  Character  evolves  its  best  products  for 
home  consumption ;  but,  mind  you,  it  takes  a  deal 
more  to  feed  a  family  for  thirty  years  than  to  make  a 
holiday  feast  for  our  neighbors  once  or  twice  in  our 
lives.  You  talk  of  the  fire  of  genius.  Many  a  blessed 
woman,  who  dies  unsung  and  unremembered,  has 
given  out  more  of  the  real  vital  heat  that  keeps  the 
life  in  human  souls,  without  a  spark  flitting  through 
her  humble  chimney  to  tell  the  world  about  it,  than 
would  set  a  dozen  theories  smoking,  or  a  hundred  odes 
simmering,  in  the  brains  of  so  many  men  of  genius. 
It  is  in  latent  caloric,  if  I  may  borrow  a  philosophical 
expression,  that  many  of  the  noblest  hearts  give  out 
the  life  that  warms  them.  Cornelia's  lips  grow  white, 
and  her  pulse  hardly  warms  her  thin  fingers,  —  but 
she  has  melted  all  the  ice  out  of  the  hearts  of  those 
young  Gracchi,  and  her  lost  heat  is  in  the  blood  of 
her  youthful  heroes.  We  are  always  valuing  the 
soul's  temperature  by  the  thermometer  of  public  deed 
or  word.  Yet  the  great  sun  himself,  when  he  pours 
his  noonday  beams  upon  some  vast  hyaline  boulder, 
rent  from  the  eternal  ice-quarries,  and  floating  toward 
the  tropics,  never  warms  it  a  fraction  above  the  thirty- 
two  degrees  of  Fahrenheit  that  marked  the  moment 
when  the  first  drop  trickled  down  its  side. 

How  we  all  like  the  spirting  up  of  a  fountain, 
seemingly  against  the  law  that  makes  water  everywhere 
slide,  roll,  leap,  tumble  headlong,  to  get  as  low  as  the 
earth  will  let  it  !  That  is  genius.  But  what  is  this 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    289 

transient  upward  movement,  which  gives  us  the  glitter 
and  the  rainbow,  to  that  unsleeping,  all-present  force 
of  gravity,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever, 
(if  the  universe  be  eternal,)  —  the  great  outspread 
hand  of  God  himself,  forcing  all  things  down  into 
their  places,  and  keeping  them  there?  Such,  in 
smaller  proportion,  is  the  force  of  character  to  the  fit 
ful  movements  of  genius,  as  they  are  or  have  been 
linked  to  each  other  in  many  a  household,  where  one 
name  was  historic,  and  the  other,  let  me  say  the  no 
bler,  unknown,  save  by  some  faint  reflected  ray,  bor 
rowed  from  its  lustrous  companion. 

Oftentimes,  as  I  have  lain  swinging  on  the  water, 
in  the  swell  of  the  Chelsea  ferry-boats,  in  that  long, 
sharp-pointed,  black  cradle  in  which  I  love  to  let  the 
great  mother  rock  me,  I  have  seen  a  tall  ship  glide  by 
against  the  tide,  as  if  drawn  by  some  invisible  tow- 
line,  with  a  hundred  strong  arms  pulling  it.  Her 
sails  hung  unfilled,  her  streamers  were  drooping,  she 
had  neither  side-wheel  nor  stern-wheel ;  still  she  moved 
on,  stately,  in  serene  triumph,  as  if  with  her  own  life. 
But  I  knew  that  on  the  other  side  of  the  ship,  hidden 
beneath  the  great  hulk  that  swam  so  majestically, 
there  was  a  little  toiling  steam-tug,  with  heart  of  fire 
and  arms  of  iron,  that  was  hugging  it  close  and  drag 
ging  it  bravely  on;  and  I  knew,  that,  if  the  little 
steam-tug  untwined  her  arms  and  left  the  tall  ship,  it 
would  wallow  and  roll  about,  and  drift  hither  and 
thither,  and  go  off  with  the  refluent  tide,  no  man 
knows  whither.  And  so  I  have  known  more  than  one 
genius,  high-decked,  full-freighted,  wide-sailed,  gay- 
pennoned,  that,  but  for  the  bare  toiling  arms,  and 
brave,  warm,  beating  heart  of  the  faithful  little  wife, 
that  nestled  close  in  his  shadow,  and  clung  to  him, 


290   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

so  that  no  wind  or  wave  could  part  them,  and  dragged 
him  on  against  all  the  tide  of  circumstance,  would 
soon  have  gone  down  the  stream  and  been  heard  of  no 
more.  —  No,  I  am  too  much  a  lover  of  genius,  I  some 
times  think,  and  too  often  get  impatient  with  dull 
people,  so  that,  in  their  weak  talk,  where  nothing  is 
taken  for  granted,  I  look  forward  to  some  future 
possible  state  of  development,  when  a  gesture  pass 
ing  between  a  beatified  human  soul  and  an  archan 
gel  shall  signify  as  much  as  the  complete  history  of 
a  planet,  from  the  time  when  it  curdled  to  the  time 
when  its  sun  was  burned  out.  And  yet,  when  a 
strong  brain  is  weighed  with  a  true  heart,  it  seems 
to  me  like  balancing  a  bubble  against  a  wedge  of 
gold. 

—  It  takes  a  very  true  man  to  be  a  fitting  compan 
ion  for  a  woman  of  genius,  but  not  a  very  great  one. 
I  am  not  sure  that  she  will  not  embroider  her  ideal 
better  on  a  plain  ground  than  on  one  with  a 'brilliant 
pattern  already  worked  in  its  texture.  But  as  the 
very  essence  of  genius  is  truthfulness,  contact  with 
realities,  (which  are  always  ideas  behind  shows  of  form 
or  language,)  nothing  is  so  contemptible  as  falsehood 
and  pretence  in  its  eyes.  Now  it  is  not  easy  to  find 
a  perfectly  true  woman,  and  it  is  very  hard  to  find  a 
perfectly  true  man.  And  a  woman  of  genius,  who  has 
the  sagacity  to  choose  such  a  one  as  her  companion, 
shows  more  of  the  divine  gift  in  so  doing  than  in  her 
finest  talk  or  her  most  brilliant  work  of  letters  or  of 
art. 

I  have  been  a  good  while  coming  at  a  secret,  for 
which  I  wished  to  prepare  you  before  telling  it.  I 
think  there  is  a  kindly  feeling  growing  up  between 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    291 

Iris  and  our  young  Marylar\der.  Not  that  I  suppose 
there  is  any  distinct  understanding  between  them,  but 
that  the  affinity  which  has  drawn  him  from  the  remote 
corner  where  he  sat  to  the  side  of  the  young  girl  is 
quietly  bringing  their  two  natures  together.  Just 
now  she  is  all  given  up  to  another;  but  when  he  no 
longer  calls  upon  her  daily  thoughts  and  cares,  I  warn 
you  not  to  be  surprised,  if  this  bud  of  friendship  open 
like  the  evening  primrose,  with  a  sound  as  of  a  sud 
den  stolen  kiss,  and  lo !  the  flower  of  full-blown  love 
lies  unfolded  before  you. 

And  now  the  days  had  come  for  our  little  friend, 
whose  whims  and  weaknesses  had  interested  us,  per 
haps,  as  much  as  his  better  traits,  to  make  ready  for 
that  long  journey  which  is  easier  to  the  cripple  than 
to  the  strong  man,  and  on  which  none  enters  so  will 
ingly  as  he  who  has  borne  the  life-long  load  of  infirm 
ity  during  his  earthly  pilgrimage.  At  this  point, 
under  most  circumstances,  I  would  close  the  doors  and 
draw  the  veil  of  privacy  before  the  chamber  where  the 
birth  which  we  call  death,  out  of  life  into  the  unknown 
world,  is  working  its  mystery.  But  this  friend  of 
ours  stood  alone  in  the  world,  and,  as  the  last  act  of 
his  life  was  mainly  in  harmony  with  the  rest  of  its 
drama,  I  do  not  here  feel  the  force  of  the  objection 
commonly  lying  against  that  death-bed  literature 
which  forms  the  staple  of  a  certain  portion  of  the 
press.  Let  me  explain  what  I  mean,  so  that  my  read 
ers  may  think  for  themselves  a  little,  before  they 
accuse  me  of  hasty  expressions. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  certain  formulae 
for  its  dying  children,  to  which  almost  all  of  them  at 
tach  the  greatest  importance.  There  is  hardly  a  crim- 


292    THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

inal  so  abandoned  that  he  is  not  anxious  to  receive  the 
"consolations  of  religion  "  in  his  last  hours.  Even  if 
he  be  senseless,  but  still  living,  I  think  that  the  form 
is  gone  through  with,  just  as  baptism  is  administered 
to  the  unconscious  new-born  child.  Now  we  do  not 
quarrel  with  these  forms.  We  look  with  reverence 
and  affection  upon  all  symbols  which  give  peace  and 
comfort  to  our  fellow-creatures.  But  the  value  of  the 
new-born  child's  passive  consent  to  the  ceremony  is 
null,  as  testimony  to  the  truth  of  a  doctrine.  The 
automatic  closing  of  a  dying  man's  lips  on  the  conse 
crated  wafer  proves  nothing  in  favor  of  the  Real  Pres 
ence,  or  any  other  dogma.  And,  speaking  generally, 
the  evidence  of  dying  men  in  favor  of  any  belief  is  to 
be  received  with  great  caution. 

They  commonly  tell  the  truth  about  their  present 
feelings,  no  doubt.  A  dying  man's  deposition  about 
anything  he  knows  is  good  evidence.  But  it  is  of 
much  less  consequence  what  a  man  thinks  and  says 
when  he  is  changed  by  pain,  weakness,  apprehension, 
than  what  he  thinks  when  he  is  truly  and  wholly  him 
self.  Most  murderers  die  in  a  very  pious  frame  of 
mind,  expecting  to  go  to  glory  at  once;  yet  no  man 
believes  he  shall  meet  a  larger  average  of  pirates  and 
cut-throats  in  the  streets  of  the  New  Jerusalem  than 
of  honest  folks  that  died  in  their  beds. 

Unfortunately,  there  has  been  a  very  great  tendency 
to  make  capital  of  various  kinds  out  of  dying  men's 
speeches.  The  lies  that  have  been  put  into  their 
mouths  for  this  purpose  are  endless.  The  prime  min 
ister,  whose  last  breath  was  spent  in  scolding  his 
nurse,  dies  with  a  magnificent  apothegm  on  his  lips,  — 
manufactured  by  a  reporter.  Addison  gets  up  a  ta 
bleau  and  utters  an  admirable  sentiment,  —  or  some- 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    298 

body  makes  the  posthumous  dying  epigram  for  him. 
The  incoherent  babble  of  green  fields  is  translated 
into  the  language  of  stately  sentiment.  One  would 
think,  all  that  dying  men  had  to  do  was  to  say  the 
prettiest  thing  they  could,  —  to  make  their  rhetorical 
point,  —  and  then  bow  themselves  politely  out  of  the 
world. 

Worse  than  this  is  the  torturing  of  dying  people 
to  get  their  evidence  in  favor  of  this  or  that  favorite 
belief.  The  camp-followers  of  proselyting  sects  have 
come  in  at  the  close  of  every  life  where  they  could  get 
in,  to  strip  the  languishing  soul  of  its  thoughts,  and 
carry  them  off  as  spoils.  The  Roman  Catholic  or 
other  priest  who  insists  on  the  reception  of  his  formula 
means  kindly,  we  trust,  and  very  commonly  succeeds 
in  getting  the  acquiescence  of  the  subject  of  his  spir 
itual  surgery,  but  do  not  let  us  take  the  testimony  of 
people  who  are  in  the  worst  condition  to  form  opinions 
as  evidence  of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  that  which 
they  accept.  A  lame  man's  opinion  of  dancing  is  not 
good  for  much.  A  poor  fellow  who  can  neither  eat 
nor  drink,  who  is  sleepless  and  full  of  pains,  whose 
flesh  has  wasted  from  him,  whose  blood  is  like  water, 
who  is  gasping  for  breath,  is  not  in  a  condition  to 
judge  fairly  of  human  life,  which  in  all  its  main  ad 
justments  is  intended  for  men  in  a  normal,  healthy 
condition.  It  is  a  remark  I  have  heard  from  the  wise 
Patriarch  of  the  Medical  Profession  among  us,  that 
the  moral  condition  of  patients  with  disease  above  the 
great  breathing-muscle,  the  diaphragm,  is  much  more 
hopeful  than  that  of  patients  with  disease  below  it,  in 
the  digestive  organs.  Many  an  honest  ignorant  man 
has  given  us  pathology  when  he  thought  he  was  giving 
us  psychology.  With  this  preliminary  caution  I  shall 


294   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

proceed  to  the  story  of  the  Little  Gentleman's  leav 
ing  us. 

When  the  divinity-student  found  that  our  fellow- 
boarder  was  not  likely  to  remain  long  with  us,  he, 
being  a  young  man  of  tender  conscience  and  kindly 
nature,  was  not  a  little  exercised  on  his  behalf.  It 
was  undeniable  that  on  several  occasions  the  Little 
Gentleman  had  expressed  himself  with  a  good  deal  of 
freedom  on  a  class  of  subjects  which,  according  to  the 
divinity-student,  he  had  no  right  to  form  an  opinion 
upon.  He  therefore  considered  his  future  welfare  in 
jeopardy. 

The  Muggletonian  sect  have  a  very  odd  way  of 
dealing  with  people.  If  I,  the  Professor,  will  only 
give  in  to  the  Muggletonian  doctrine,  there  shall  be 
no  question  through  all  that  persuasion  that  I  am  com 
petent  to  judge  of  that  doctrine;  nay,  I  shall  be 
quoted  as  evidence  of  its  truth,  while  I  live,  and  cited, 
after  I  am  dead,  as  testimony  in  its  behalf.  But  if 
I  utter  any  ever  so  slight  Anti-Muggletonian  senti 
ment,  then  I  become  incompetent  to  form  any  opinion 
on  the  matter.  This,  you  cannot  fail  to  observe,  is 
exactly  the  way  the  pseudo-sciences  go  to  work,  as 
explained  in  my  Lecture  on  Phrenology.  Now  I  hold 
that  he  whose  testimony  would  be  accepted  in  behalf 
of  the  Muggletonian  doctrine  has  a  right  to  be  heard 
against  it.  Whoso  offers  me  any  article  of  belief  for 
my  signature  implies  that  I  am  competent  to  form  an 
opinion  upon  it ;  and  if  my  positive  testimony  in  its 
favor  is  of  any  value,  then  my  negative  testimony 
against  it  is  also  of  value. 

I  thought  my  young  friend's  attitude  was  a  little 
too  much  like  that  of  the  Muggletonians.  I  also  re 
marked  a  singular  timidity  on  his  part  lest  somebody 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    295 

should  "unsettle"  somebody's  faith,  — as  if  faith  did 
not  require  exercise  as  much  as  any  other  living 
thing,  and  were  not  all  the  better  for  a  shaking  up 
now  and  then.  I  don't  mean  that  it  would  be  fair 
to  bother  Bridget,  the  wild  Irish  girl,  or  Joice  Heth, 
the  centenarian,  or  any  other  intellectual  non-combat 
ant;  but  all  persons  who  proclaim  a  belief  which 
passes  judgment  on  their  neighbors  must  be  ready  to 
have  it  "unsettled,"  that  is,  questioned,  at  all  times 
and  by  anybody,  —  just  as  those  who  set  up  bars 
across  a  thoroughfare  must  expect  to  have  them  taken 
down  by  every  one  who  wants  to  pass,  if  he  is  strong 
enough. 

Besides,  to  think  of  trying  to  water-proof  the 
American  mind  against  the  questions  that  Heaven 
rains  down  upon  it  shows  a  misapprehension  of  our 
new  conditions.  If  to  question  everything  be  unlaw 
ful  and  dangerous,  we  had  better  undeclare  our  inde 
pendence  at  once;  for  what  the  Declaration  means 
is  the  right  to  question  everything,  even  the  truth  of 
its  own  fundamental  proposition. 

The  old-world  order  of  things  is  an  arrangement  of 
locks  and  canals,  where  everything  depends  on  keep 
ing  the  gates  shut,  and  so  holding  the  upper  waters  at 
their  level;  but  the  system  under  which  the  young 
republican  American  is  born  trusts  the  whole  unim 
peded  tide  of  life  to  the  great  elemental  influences,  as 
the  vast  rivers  of  the  continent  settle  their  own  level 
in  obedience  to  the  laws  that  govern  the  planet  and 
the  spheres  that  surround  it. 

The  divinity-student  was  not  quite  up  to  the  idea  of 
the  commonwealth,  as  our  young  friend  the  Mary- 
lander,  for  instance,  understood  it.  He  could  not  get 
rid  of  that  notion  of  private  property  in  truth,  with 


296  THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the  right  to  fence  it  in,  and  put  up  a  sign-board, 
thus :  — 

D^p13     ALL     TRESPASSERS     ARE    WARNED    OFF    THESE 
GROUNDS  ! 

He  took  the  young  Marylander  to  task  for  going  to 
the  Church  of  the  Galileans,  where  he  had  several 
times  accompanied  Iris  of  late. 

I  am  a  Churchman,  —  the  young  man  said,  —  by 
education  and  habit.  I  love  my  old  Church  for  many 
reasons,  but  most  of  all  because  I  think  it  has  edu 
cated  me  out  of  its  own  forms  into  the  spirit  of  its 
highest  teachings.  I  think  I  belong  to  the  "Broad 
Church,"  if  any  of  you  can  tell  what  that  means. 

I  had  the  rashness  to  attempt  to  answer  the  question 
myself.  —  Some  say  the  Broad  Church  means  the 
collective  mass  of  good  people  of  all  denominations. 
Others  say  that  such  a  definition  is  nonsense;  that 
a  church  is  an  organization,  and  the  scattered  good 
folks  are  no  organization  at  all.  They  think  that  men 
will  eventually  come  together  on  the  basis  of  one  or 
two  or  more  common  articles  of  belief,  and  form  a 
great  unity.  Do  they  see  what  this  amounts  to?  It 
means  an  equal  division  of  intellect!  It  is  mental 
agrarianism!  a  thing  that  never  was  and  never  will 
be  until  national  and  individual  idiosyncrasies  have 
ceased  to  exist.  The  man  of  thirty-nine  beliefs  holds 
the  man  of  one  belief  a  pauper ;  he  is  not  going  to  give 
up  thirty-eight  of  them  for  the  sake  of  fraternizing 
with  the  other  in  the  temple  which  bears  on  its  front, 
"Deo  erexit  Voltaire."  A  church  is  a  garden,  I  have 
heard  it  said,  and  the  illustration  was  neatly  handled. 
Yes,  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  broad  garden. 
It  must  be  fenced  in,  and  whatever  is  fenced  in  is 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    297 

narrow.  You  cannot  have  arctic  and  tropical  plants 
growing  together  in  it,  except  by  the  forcing  system, 
which  is  a  mighty  narrow  piece  of  business.  You 
can't  make  a  village  or  a  parish  or  a  family  think 
alike,  yet  you  suppose  that  you  can  make  a  world 
pinch  its  beliefs  or  pad  them  to  a  single  pattern! 
Why,  the  very  life  of  an  ecclesiastical  organization  is 
a  life  of  induction,  a  state  of  perpetually  disturbed 
equilibrium  kept  up  by  another  charged  body  in  the 
neighborhood.  If  the  two  bodies  touch  and  share 
their  respective  charges,  down  goes  the  index  of  the 
electrometer  ! 

Do  you  know  that  every  man  has  a  religious  belief 
peculiar  to  himself?  Smith  is  always  a  Smithite. 
He  takes  in  exactly  Smith's-worth  of  knowledge, 
Smith's-worth  of  truth,  of  beauty,  of  divinity.  And 
Brown  has  from  time  immemorial  been  trying  to  burn 
him,  to  excommunicate  him,  to  anonymous -article 
him,  because  he  did  not  take  in  Brown 's-worth  of 
knowledge,  truth,  beauty,  divinity.  He  cannot  do  it, 
any  more  than  a  pint-pot  can  hold  a  quart,  or  a  quart- 
pot  be  filled  by  a  pint.  Iron  is  essentially  the  same 
everywhere  and  always;  but  the  sulphate  of  iron  is 
never  the  same  as  the  carbonate  of  iron.  Truth  is 
invariable;  but  the  Smithate  of  truth  must  always 
differ  from  the  Brownate  of  truth. 

The  wider  the  intellect,  the  larger  and  simpler  the 
expressions  in  which  its  knowledge  is  embodied.  The 
inferior  race,  the  degraded  and  enslaved  people,  the 
small-minded  individual,  live  in  the  details  which  to 
larger  minds  and  more  advanced  tribes  of  men  reduce 
themselves  to  axioms  and  laws.  As  races  and  indi 
vidual  minds  must  always  differ  just  as  sulphates  and 
carbonates  do,  I  cannot  see  ground  for  expecting  the 


298   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Broad  Church  to  be  founded  on  any  fusion  of  intel 
lectual  beliefs,  which  of  course  implies  that  those  who 
hold  the  larger  number  of  doctrines  as  essential  shall 
come  down  to  those  who  hold  the  smaller  number. 
These  doctrines  are  to  the  negative  aristocracy  what 
the  quarterings  of  their  coats  are  to  the  positive  orders 
of  nobility. 

The  Broad  Church,  I  think,  will  never  be  based  on 
anything  that  requires  the  use  of  language.  Freema 
sonry  gives  an  idea  of  such  a  church,  and  a  brother  is 
known  and  cared  for  in  a  strange  land  where  no  word 
of  his  can  be  understood.  The  apostle  of  this  church 
may  be  a  deaf  mute  carrying  a  cup  of  cold  water  to  a 
thirsting  fellow-creature.  The  cup  of  cold  water  does 
not  require  to  be  translated  for  a  foreigner  to  under 
stand  it.  I  am  afraid  the  only  Broad  Church  possi 
ble  is  one  that  has  its  creed  in  the  heart,  and  not  in 
the  head,  —  that  we  shall  know  its  members  by  their 
fruits,  and  not  by  their  words.  If  you  say  this  com 
munion  of  well-doers  is  no  church,  I  can  only  answer, 
that  all  organized  bodies  have  their  limits  of  size,  and 
that  when  we  find  a  man  a  hundred  feet  high  and 
thirty  feet  broad  across  the  shoulders,  we  will  look 
out  for  an  organization  that  shall  include  all  Chris 
tendom. 

Some  of  us  do  practically  recognize  a  Broad  Church 
and  a  Narrow  Church,  however.  The  Narrow  Church 
may  be  seen  in  the  ship's  boats  of  humanity,  in  the 
long  boat,  in  the  jolly  boat,  in  the  captain's  gig,  lying 
off  the  poor  old  vessel,  thanking  God  that  they  are  safe, 
and  reckoning  how  soon  the  hulk  containing  the  mass 
of  their  fellow-creatures  will  go  down.  The  Broad 
Church  is  on  board,  working  hard  at  the  pumps,  and 
very  slow  to  believe  that  the  ship  will  be  swallowed 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    299 

up  with  so  many  poor  people  in  it,  fastened  down 
under  the  hatches  ever  since  it  floated. 

—  All  this,   of  course,  was  nothing  but  my  poor 
notion  about  these  matters.     I  am   simply  an  "out 
sider,"  you  know;  only  it  doesn't  do  very  well  for  a 
nest  of  Hingham  boxes  to  talk  too  much  about  out 
siders  and  insiders ! 

After  this  talk  of  ours,  I  think  these  two  young 
people  went  pretty  regularly  to  the  Church  of  the 
Galileans.  Still  they  could  not  keep  away  from  the 
sweet  harmonies  and  rhythmic  litanies  of  Saint  Poly- 
carp  on  the  great  Church  festival-days;  so  that,  be 
tween  the  two,  they  were  so  much  together,  that  the 
boarders  began  to  make  remarks,  and  our  landlady 
said  to  me,  one  day,  that,  though  it  was  noon  of  her 
business,  them  that  had  eyes  could  n't  help  seein'  that 
there  was  some  thin'  goin'  on  between  them  two  young 
people ;  she  thought  the  young  man  was  a  very  likely 
young  man,  though  jest  what  his  prospecs  was  was  un 
beknown  to  her ;  but  she  thought  he  must  be  doing 
well,  and  rather  guessed  he  would  be  able  to  take  care 
of  a  femily,  if  he  didn't  go  to  takin'  a  house;  for  a 
gentleman  and  his  wife  could  board  a  great  deal 
cheaper  than  they  could  keep  house ;  —  but  then  that 
girl  was  nothin'  but  a  child,  and  would  n't  think  of 
bein'  married  this  five  year.  They  was  good  board 
ers,  both  of  'em,  paid  regular,  and  was  as  pooty  a 
couple  as  she  ever  laid  eyes  on. 

—  To  come  back  to  what  I  began  to  speak  of  be 
fore,  —  the  divinity-student  Was  exercised  in  his  mind 
about  the  Little  Gentleman,  and,  in  the  kindness  of 
his  heart,  —  for  he  was  a  good  young  man,  —  and  in 
the  strength  of  his  convictions,  —  for  he  took  it  for 
granted  that  he  and  his  crowd  were  right,  and  other 


300    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

folks  and  their  crowd  were  wrong,  —  he  determined 
to  bring  the  Little  Gentleman  round  to  his  faith  be 
fore  he  died,  if  he  could.  So  he  sent  word  to  the  sick 
man,  that  he  should  be  pleased  to  visit  him  and  have 
some  conversation  with  him ;  and  received  for  answer 
that  he  would  be  welcome. 

The  divinity-student  made  him  a  visit,  therefore, 
and  had  a  somewhat  remarkable  interview  with  him, 
which  I  shall  briefly  relate,  without  attempting  to 
justify  the  positions  taken  by  the  Little  Gentleman. 
He  found  him  weak,  but  calm.  Iris  sat  silent  by  his 
pillow. 

After  the  usual  preliminaries,  the  divinity-student 
said,  in  a  kind  way,  that  he  was  sorry  to  find  him  in 
failing  health,  that  he  felt  concerned  for  his  soul,  and 
was  anxious  to  assist  him  in  making  preparations  for 
the  great  change  awaiting  him. 

I  thank  you,  Sir,  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman,  — 
permit  me  to  ask  you,  what  makes  you  think  I  am 
not  ready  for  it,  Sir,  and  that  you  can  do  anything  to 
help  me,  Sir? 

I  address  you  only  as  a  fellow-man,  —  said  the 
divinity-student,  —  and  thoref ore  a  fellow-sinner. 

I  am  not  a  man,  Sir !  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman. 
—  I  was  born  into  this  world  the  wreck  of  a  man,  and 
I  shall  not  be  judged  with  a  race  to  which  I  do  not 
belong.  Look  at  this!  —  he  said,  and  held  up  his 
withered  arm.  —  See  there !  —  and  he  pointed  to  his 
misshapen  extremities.  —  Lay  your  hand  here !  —  and 
he  laid  his  own  on  the  region  of  his  misplaced  heart. 
—  I  have  known  nothing  of  the  life  of  your  race. 
When  I  first  came  to  my  consciousness,  I  found  my 
self  an  object  of  pity,  or  a  sight  to  show.  The  first 
strange  child  I  ever  remember  hid  its  face  and  would 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    301 

not  come  near  me.  I  was  a  broken-hearted  as  well  as 
broken-bodied  boy.  I  grew  into  the  emotions  of 
ripening  youth,  and  all  that  I  could  have  loved  shrank 
from  my  presence.  I  became  a  man  in  years,  and 
had  nothing  in  common  with  manhood  but  its  long 
ings.  My  life  is  the  dying  pang  of  a  worn-out  race, 
and  I  shall  go  down  alone  into  the  dust,  out  of  this 
world  of  men  and  women,  without  ever  knowing  the 
fellowship  of  the  one  or  the  love  of  the  other.  I  will 
not  die  with  a  lie  rattling  in  my  throat.  If  another 
state  of  being  has  anything  worse  in  store  for  me,  I 
have  had  a  long  apprenticeship  to  give  me  strength 
that  I  may  bear  it.  I  don't  believe  it,  Sir !  I  have 
too  much  faith  for  that.  God  has  not  left  me  wholly 
without  comfort,  even  here.  I  love  this  old  place 
where  I  was  born;  —  the  heart  of  the  world  beats 
under  the  three  hills  of  Boston,  Sir !  I  love  this  great 
land,  with  so  many  tall  men  in  it,  and  so  many  good, 
noble  women.  —  His  eyes  turned  to  the  silent  figure 
by  his  pillow.  —  I  have  learned  to  accept  meekly  what 
has  been  allotted  to  me,  but  I  cannot  honestly  say 
that  I  think  my  sin  has  been  greater  than  my  suffer 
ing.  I  bear  the  ignorance  and  the  evil-doing  of  whole 
generations  in  my  single  person.  I  never  drew  a 
breath  of  air  nor  took  a  step  that  was  not  a  punish 
ment  for  another's  fault.  I  may  have  had  many 
wrong  thoughts,  but  I  cannot  have  done  many  wrong 
deeds,  —  for  my  cage  has  been  a  narrow  one,  and  I 
have  paced  it  alone.  I  have  looked  through  the  bars 
and  seen  the  great  world  of  men  busy  and  happy,  but 
I  had  no  part  in  their  doings.  I  have  known  what  it 
was  to  dream  of  the  great  passions;  but  since  my 
mother  kissed  me  before  she  died,  no  woman's  lips 
have  pressed  my  cheek,  —  nor  ever  will, 


302   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE-  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

—  The  young  girl's  eyes  glittered  with  a  sudden 
film,  and  almost  without  a  thought,  but  with  a  warm 
human  instinct  that  rushed  up  into  her  face  with  her 
heart's  blood,  she  bent  over  and  kissed  him.  It  was 
the  sacrament  that  washed  out  the  memory  of  long 
years  of  bitterness,  and  I  should  hold  it  an  unworthy 
thought  to  defend  her. 

The  Little  Gentleman  repaid  her  with  the  only  tear 
any  of  us  ever  saw  him  shed. 

The  divinity-student  rose  from  his  place,  and,  turn 
ing  away  from  the  sick  man,  walked  to  the  other  side 
of  the  room,  where  he  bowed  his  head  and  was  still. 
All  the  questions  he  had  meant  to  ask  had  faded  from 
his  memory.  The  tests  he  had  prepared  by  which  to 
judge  of  his  fellow-creature's  fitness  for  heaven  seemed 
to  have  lost  their  virtue.  He  could  trust  the  crippled 
child  of  sorrow  to  the  Infinite  Parent.  The  kiss  of 
the  fair-haired  girl  had  been  like  a  sign  from  heaven, 
that  angels  watched  over  him  whom  he  was  presuming 
but  a  moment  before  to  summon  before  the  tribunal  of 
his  private  judgment. 

Shall  I  pray  with  you?  —  he  said,  after  a  pause.  — 
A  little  before  he  would  have  said,  Shall  I  prayybr 
you?  —  The  Christian  religion,  as  taught  by  its 
Founder,  is  full  of  sentiment.  So  we  must  not 
blame  the  divinity-student,  if  he  was  overcome  by 
those  yearnings  of  human  sympathy  which  predomi 
nate  so  much  more  in  the  sermons  of  the  Master  than 
in  the  writings  of  his  successors,  and  which  have  made 
the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  the  consolation  of 
mankind,  as  it  has  been  the  stumbling-block  of  all 
exclusive  doctrines. 

Pray !  —  said  the  Little  Gentleman. 

The  divinity -student  prayed,  in  low,  tender  tones, 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    303 

that  God  would  look  on  his  servant  lying  helpless  at 
the  feet  of  his  mercy ;  that  He  would  remember  his 
long  years  of  bondage  in  the  flesh;  that  He  would 
deal  gently  with  the  bruised  reed.  Thou  hast  vis 
ited  the  sins  of  the  fathers  upon  this  their  child.  Oh, 
turn  away  from  him  the  penalties  of  his  own  transgres 
sions!  Thou  hast  laid  upon  him,  from  infancy,  the 
cross  which  thy  stronger  children  are  called  upon  to 
take  up;  and  now  that  he  is  fainting  under  it,  be 
Thou  his  stay,  and  do  Thou  succor  him  that  is 
tempted !  Let  his  manifold  infirmities  come  between 
him  and  Thy  judgment;  in  wrath  remember  mercy! 
If  his  eyes  are  not  opened  to  all  Thy  fruth,  let  Thy 
compassion  lighten  the  darkness  that  rests  upon  him, 
even  as  it  came  through  the  word  of  thy  Son  to  blind 
Bartimeus,  who  sat  by  the  wayside,  begging! 

Many  more  petitions  he  uttered,  but  all  in  the 
same  subdued  tone  of  tenderness.  In  the  presence  of 
helpless  suffering,  and  in  the  fast -darkening  shadow 
of  the  Destroyer,  he  forgot  all  but  his  Christian  hu 
manity,  and  cared  more  about  consoling  his  fellow- 
man  than  making  a  proselyte  of  him. 

This  was  the  last  prayer  to  which  the  Little  Gentle 
man  ever  listened.  Some  change  was  rapidly  coming 
over  him  during  this  last  hour  of  which  I  have  been 
speaking.  The  excitement  of  pleading  his  cause  be 
fore  his  self -elected  spiritual  adviser,  —  the  emotion 
which  overcame  him,  when  the  young  girl  obeyed  the 
sudden  impulse  of  her  feelings  and  pressed  her  lips  to 
his  cheek,  —  the  thoughts  that  mastered  him  while  the 
divinity-student  poured  out  his  soul  for  him  in  prayer, 
might  well  hurry  on  the  inevitable  moment.  When 
the  divinity-student  had  uttered  his  last  petition,  com 
mending  him  to  the  Father  through  his  Son's  interces- 


304    THE   PKOFESSOK  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sion,  he  turned  to  look  upon  him  before  leaving  his 
chamber.  His  face  was  changed.  —  There  is  a  lan 
guage  of  the  human  countenance  which  we  all  under 
stand  without  an  interpreter,  though  the  lineaments 
belong  to  the  rudest  savage  that  ever  stammered  in  an 
unknown  barbaric  dialect.  By  the  stillness  of  the 
sharpened  features,  by  the  blankness  of  the  tearless 
eyes,  by  the  fixedness  of  the  smileless  mouth,  by  the 
deadening  tints,  by  the  contracted  brow,  by  the  dilat 
ing  nostril,  we  know  that  the  soul  is  soon  to  leave  its 
mortal  tenement,  and  is  already  closing  up  its  windows 
and  putting  out  its  fires.  —  Such  was  the  aspect  of  the 
face  upon  which  the  divinity-student  looked,  after  the 
brief  silence  which  followed  his  prayer.  The  change 
had  been  rapid,  though  not  that  abrupt  one  which  is 
liable  to  happen  at  any  moment  in  these  cases.  —  The 
sick  man  looked  towards  him.  —  Farewell,  —  he  said, 

—  I  thank  you.     Leave  me  alone  with  her. 

When  the  divinity-student  had  gone,  and  the  Little 
Gentleman  found  himself  alone  with  Iris,  he  lifted  his 
hand  to  his  neck,  and  took  from  it,  suspended  by  a 
slender  chain,  a  quaint,  antique -looking  key,  —  the 
same  key  I  had  once  seen  him  holding.  He  gave  this 
to  her,  and  pointed  to  a  carved  cabinet  opposite  his 
bed,  one  of  those  that  had  so  attracted  my  curious  eyes 
and  set  me  wondering  as  to  what  it  might  contain. 

Open  it, — he  said, — and  light  the  lamp. — The 
young  girl  walked  to  the  cabinet  and  unlocked  the 
door.  A  deep  recess  appeared,  lined  with  black  vel 
vet,  against  which  stood  in  white  relief  an  ivory  cruci 
fix.  A  silver  lamp  hung  over  it.  She  lighted  the 
lamp  and  came  back  to  the  bedside.  The  dying  man 
fixed  his  eyes  upon  the  figure  of  the  dying  Saviour. 

—  Give  me  your  hand,  — he  said;  and  Iris  placed  her 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    305 

right  hand  in  his  left.  So  they  remained,  until  pres 
ently  his  eyes  lost  their  meaning,  though  they  still  re 
mained  vacantly  fixed  upon  the  white  image.  Yet  he 
held  the  young  girl's  hand  firmly,  as  if  it  were  leading 
him  through  some  deep-shadowed  valley  and  it  was  all 
he  could  cling  to.  But  presently  an  involuntary  mus 
cular  contraction  stole  over  him,  and  his  terrible  dying 
grasp  held  the  poor  girl  as  if  she  were  wedged  in  an 
engine  of  torture.  She  pressed  her  lips  together  and 
sat  still.  The  inexorable  hand  held  her  tighter  and 
tighter,  until  she  felt  as  if  her  own  slender  fingers 
would  be  crushed  in  its  gripe.  It  was  one  of  the  tor 
tures  of  the  Inquisition  she  was  suffering,  and  she 
could  not  stir  from  her  place.  Then,  in  her  great  an 
guish,  she,  too,  cast  her  eyes  upon  that  dying  figure, 
and,  looking  upon  its  pierced  hands  and  feet  and  side 
and  lacerated  forehead,  she  felt  that  she  also  must 
suffer  uncomplaining.  In  the  moment  of  her  sharpest 
pain  she  did  not  forget  the  duties  of  her  tender  office, 
but  dried  the  dying  man's  moist  forehead  with  her 
handkerchief,  even  while  the  dews  of  agony  were  glis 
tening  on  her  own.  How  long  this  lasted  she  never 
could  tell.  Time  and  thirst  are  two  things  you  and 
I  talk  about;  but  the  victims  whom  holy  men  and 
righteous  judges  used  to  stretch  on  their  engines  knew 
better  what  they  meant  than  you  or  I !  —  What  is  that 
great  bucket  of  water  for?  said  the  Marchioness  de 
Brinvilliers,  before  she  was  placed  on  the  rack.  —  For 
you  to  drink,  — said  the  torturer  to  the  little  woman. 
—  She  could  not  think  that  it  would  take  such  a  flood 
to  quench  the  fire  in  her  and  so  keep  her  alive  for  her 
confession.  The  torturer  knew  better  than  she. 

After  a  time  not  to  be  counted  in  minutes,  as  the 
clock  measures,  —  without  any  warning,  —  there  came 


306   THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a  swift  change  of  his  features ;  his  face  turned  white, 
as  the  waters  whiten  when  a  sudden  breath  passes 
over  their  still  surface ;  the  muscles  instantly  relaxed, 
and  Iris,  released  at  once  from  her  care  for  the  suf 
ferer  and  from  his  unconscious  grasp,  fell  senseless, 
with  a  feeble  cry,  —  the  only  utterance  of  her  long 
agony. 

Perhaps  you  sometimes  wander  in  through  the  iron 
gates  of  the  Copp's  Hill  burial-ground.  You  love  to 
stroll  round  among  the  graves  that  crowd  each  other 
in  the  thickly  peopled  soil  of  that  breezy  summit. 
You  love  to  lean  on  the  freestone  slab  which  lies  over 
the  bones  of  the  Mathers,  —  to  read  the  epitaph  of 
stout  William  Clark,  "Despiserof  Sorry  Persons  and 
little  Actions,"  —  to  stand  by  the  stone  grave  of  sturdy 
Daniel  Malcolm  and  look  upon  the  splintered  slab 
that  tells  the  old  rebel's  story, — to  kneel  by  the 
triple  stone  that  says  how  the  three  Worthylakes, 
father,  mother,  and  young  daughter,  died  on  the  same 
day  and  lie  buried  there ;  a  mystery ;  the  subject  of  a 
moving  ballad,  by  the  late  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN,  — 
as  may  be  seen  in  his  autobiography,  which  will  ex 
plain  the  secret  of  the  triple  gravestone;  though  the 
old  philosopher  has  made  a  mistake,  unless  the  stone 
is  wrong. 

Not  very  far  from  that  you  will  find  a  fair  mound, 
of  dimensions  fit  to  hold  a  well-grown  man.  I  will 
not  tell  you  the  inscription  upon  the  stone  which 
stands  at  its  head ;  for  I  do  not  wish  you  to  be  sure 
of  the  resting-place  of  one  who  could  not  bear  to 
think  that  he  should  be  known  as  a  cripple  among  the 
dead,  after  being  pointed  at  so  long  among  the  living. 
There  is  one  sign,  it  is  true,  by  which,  if  you  have 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    307 

been  a  sagacious  reader  of  these  papers,  you  will  at 
once  know  it;  but  I  fear  you  read  carelessly,  and 
must  study  them  more  diligently  before  you  will  detect 
the  hint  to  which  I  allude. 

The  Little  Gentleman  lies  where  he  longed  to  lie, 
among  the  old  names  and  the  old  bones  of  the  old 
Boston  people.  At  the  foot  of  his  resting-place-is  the 
river,  alive  with  the  wings  and  antennae  of  its  colossal 
water-insects;  over  opposite  are  the  great  war-ships, 
and  the  heavy  guns,  which,  when  they  roar,  shake  the 
soil  in  which  he  lies;  and  in  the  steeple  of  Christ 
Church,  hard  by,  are  the  sweet  chimes  which  are  the 
Boston  boy's  Ranz  des  Vetches,  whose  echoes  follow 
him  all  the  world  over. 

In  face  ! 

I  told  you  a  good  while  ago  that  the  Little  Gen 
tleman  could  not  do  a  better  thing  than  to  leave  all 
his  money,  whatever  it  might  be,  to  the  young  girl 
who  has  since  that  established  such  a  claim  upon  him. 
He  did  not,  however.  A  considerable  bequest  to  one 
of  our  public  institutions  keeps  his  name  in  grateful 
remembrance.  The  telescope  through  which  he  was 
fond  of  watching  the  heavenly  bodies,  and  the  move 
ments  of  which  had  been  the  source  of  such  odd  fan 
cies  on  my  part,  is  now  the  property  of  a  Western 
College.  You  smile  as  you  think  of  my  taking  it  for 
a  fleshless  human  figure,  when  I  saw  its  tube  pointing 
to  the  sky,  and  thought  it  was  an  arm,  under  the  white 
drapery  thrown  over  it  for  protection.  So  do  I  smile 
now;  I  belong  to  the  numerous  class  who  are  prophets 
after  the  fact,  and  hold  my  nightmares  very  cheap  by 
daylight. 

I  have  received  many  letters  of  inquiry  as  to  the 


308    THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sound  resembling  a  woman's  voice,  which  occasioned 
me  so  many  perplexities.  Some  thought  there  was  no 
question  that  he  had  a  second  apartment,  in  which  he 
had  made  a*h  asylum  for  a  deranged  female  relative. 
Others  were  of  opinion  that  he  was,  as  I  once  sug 
gested,  a  "Bluebeard"  with  patriarchal  tendencies, 
and  I  have  even  been  censured  for  introducing  so 
Oriental  an  element  into  my  record  of  boarding-house 
experience. 

Come  in  and  see  me,  the  Professor,  some  evening 
when  I  have  nothing  else  to  do,  and  ask  me  to  play 
you  TartinVs  Devil's  Sonata  on  that  extraordinary 
instrument  in  my  possession,  well  known  to  amateurs 
as  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Joseph  Guarnerius. 
The  vox  humana  of  the  great  Haerlem  organ  is  very 
lifelike,  and  the  same  stop  in  the  organ  of  the  Cam 
bridge  chapel  might  be  mistaken  in  some  of  its  tones 
for  a  human  voice ;  but  I  think  you  never  heard  any 
thing  come  so  near  the  cry  of  a  prima  donna  as  the  A 
string  and  the  E  string  of  this  instrument.  A  single 
fact  will  illustrate  the  resemblance.  I  was  executing 
some  tours  deforce  upon  it  one  evening,  when  the 
policeman  of  our  district  rang  the  bell  sharply,  and 
asked  what  was  the  matter  in  the  house.  He  had 
heard  a  woman's  screams,  — he  was  sure  of  it.  I  had 
to  make  the  instrument  sing  before  his  eyes  before 
he  could  be  satisfied  that  he  had  not  heard  the  cries 
of  a  woman.  The  instrument  was  bequeathed  to  me 
by  the  Little  Gentleman.  Whether  it  had  anything 
to  do  with  the  sounds  I  heard  coming  from  his  cham 
ber,  you  can  form  your  own  opinion;  —  I  have  no 
other  conjecture  to  offer.  It  is  not  true  that  a  second 
apartment  with  a  secret  entrance  was  found;  and  the 
story  of  the  veiled  lady  is  the  invention  of  one  of  the 
Reporters. 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT    THE    BREAKFAST-TABLE.    309 

Bridget,  the  housemaid,  always  insisted  that  he  died 
a  Catholic.  She  had  seen  the  crucifix,  and  believed 
that  he  prayed  on  his  knees  before  it.  The  last  cir 
cumstance  is  very  probably  true ;  indeed,  there  was  a 
spot  worn  on  the  carpet  just  before  this  cabinet  which 
might  be  thus  accounted  for.  Why  he,  whose  whole 
life  was  a  crucifixion,  should  not  love  to  look  on  that 
divine  image  of  blameless  suffering,  I  cannot  see;  on 
the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  that  he  should.  But  there  are  those  who 
want  to  make  private  property  of  everything,  and 
can't  make  up  their  minds  that  people  wjio  don't  think 
as  they  do  should  claim  any  interest  in  that  infinite 
compassion  expressed  in  the  central  figure  of  the 
Christendom  which  includes  us  all. 

The  divinity-student  expressed  a  hope  before  the 
boarders  that  he  shoidd  meet  him  in  heaven.  —  The 
question  is,  whether  he  '11  meet  you,  —  said  the  young 
fellow  John,  rather  smartly.  The  divinity-student 
had  n't  thought  of  that.  • 

However,  he  is  a  worthy  young  man,  and  I  trust  I 
have  shown  him  in  a  kindly  and  respectful  light.  He 
will  get  a  parish  by-and-by;  and,  as  he  is  about  to 
marry  the  sister  of  an  old  friend,  — the  Schoolmistress, 
whom  some  of  us  remember,  —  and  as  all  sorts  of  ex 
pensive  accidents  happen  to  young  married  ministers, 
he  will  be  under  bonds  to  the  amount  of  his  salary, 
which  means  starvation,  if  they  are  forfeited,  to  think 
all  his  days  as  he  thought  when  he  was  settled,  —  un 
less  the  majority  of  his  people  change  with  him  or  in 
advance  of  him.  A  hard  case,  to  which  nothing 
could  reconcile  a  man,  except  that  the  faithful  dis 
charge  of  daily  duties  in  his  personal  relations  with 
his  parishioners  will  make  him  useful  enough  in  his 


310    THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

way,  though  as  a  thinker  he  may  cease  to  exist  before 
he  has  reached  middle  age. 

—  Iris  went  into  mourning  for  the  Little  Gentle 
man.  Although,  as  I  have  said,  he  left  the  bulk  of 
his  property,  by  will,  to  a  public  institution,  he  added 
a  codicil,  by  which  he  disposed  of  various  pieces  of 
property  as  tokens  of  kind  remembrance.  It  was  in 
this  way  I  became  the  possessor  of  the  wonderful  in 
strument  I  have  spoken  of,  which  had  been  purchased 
for  him  out  of  an  Italian  convent.  The  landlady  was 
comforted  with  a  small  legacy.  The  following  extract 

relates  to  Iris:  " in  consideration  of  her  manifold 

acts  of  kindness,  but  only  in  token  of  grateful  remem 
brance,  and  by  no  means  as  a  reward  for  services 
which  cannot  be  compensated,  a  certain  messuage, 
with  all  the  land  thereto  appertaining,  situated  in 

Street,  at  the  North  End,  so  called,  of  Boston, 

aforesaid,  the  same  being  the  house  in  which  I  was 
born,  but  now  inhabited  by  several  families,  and 
known  as  'the  Rookery.' '  Iris  had  also  the  crucifix, 
the  portrait,  and  the  red-jewelled  ring.  The  funeral 
or  death's-head  ring  was  buried  with  him. 

It  was  a  good  while,  after  the  Little  Gentleman  was 
gone,  before  our  boarding-house  recovered  its  wonted 
cheerfulness.  There  was  a  flavor  in  his  whims  and 
local  prejudices  that  we  liked,  even  while  we  smiled 
at  them.  It  was  hard  to  see  the  tall  chair  thrust 
away  among  useless  lumber,  to  dismantle  his  room,  to 
take  down  the  picture  of  Leah,  the  handsome  Witch 
of  Essex,  to  move  away  the  massive  shelves  that  held 
the  books  he  loved,  to  pack  up  the  tube  through  which 
he  used  to  study  the  silent  stars,  looking  down  at  him 
like  the  eyes  of  dumb  creatures,  with  a  kind  of  stupid 
half -consciousness  that  did  not  worry  him  as  did  the 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    311 

eyes  of  men  and  women,.  —  and  hardest  of  all  to  dis 
place  that  sacred  figure  to  which  his  heart  had  always 
turned  and  found  refuge,  in  the  feelings  it  inspired, 
from  all  the  perplexities  of  his  busy  brain.  It  was 
hard,  but  it  had  to  be  done. 

And  by-and-by  we  grew  cheerful  again,  and  the 
breakfast-table  wore  something  of  its  old  look.  The 
Koh-i-noor,  as  we  named  the  gentleman  with  the  dia 
mond,  left  us,  however,  soon  after  that  "little  mill," 
as  the  young  fellow  John  called  it,  where  he  came  off 
second  best.  His  departure  was  no  doubt  hastened  by 
a  note  from  the  landlady's  daughter,  inclosing  a  lock 
of  purple  hair  which  she  "had  valued  as  a  pledge  of 
affection,  ere  she  knew  the  hollowness  of  the  vows  he 
had  breathed,"  speedily  followed  by  another,  inclosing 
the  landlady's  bill.  The  next  morning  he  was  miss 
ing,  as  were  his  limited  wardrobe  and  the  trunk  that 
held  it.  Three  empty  bottles  of  Mrs.  Allen's  cele 
brated  preparation,  each  of  them  asserting,  on  its 
word  of  honor  as  a  bottle,  that  its  former  contents 
were  "not  a  dye,"  were  all  that  was  left  to  us  of  the 
Koh-i-noor. 

From  this  time  forward,  the  landlady's  daughter 
manifested  a  decided  improvement  in  her  style  of 
carrying  herself  before  the  boarders.  She  abolished 
the  odious  little  flat,  gummy  side-curl.  She  left  off 
various  articles  of  "jewelry."  She  began  to  help  her 
mother  in  some  of  her  household  duties.  She  became 
a  regular  attendant  on  the  ministrations  of  a  very 
worthy  clergyman,  having  been  attracted  to  his  meet- 
in'  by  witnessing  a  marriage  ceremony  in  which  he 
called  a  man  and  a  woman  a  "gentleman"  and  a 
"lady,"  —  a  stroke  of  gentility  which  quite  overcame 
her.  She  even  took  a  part  in  what  she  called  a  Sab- 


312   THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

bath  school,  though  it  was  held  on  Sunday,  and  by  no 
means  on  Saturday,  as  the  name  she  intended  to  utter 
implied.  All  this,  which  was  very  sincere,  as  I  be 
lieve,  on  her  part,  and  attended  with  a  great  improve 
ment  in  her  character,  ended  in  her  bringing  home  a 
young  man,  with  straight,  sandy  hair,  brushed  so  as  to 
stand  up  steeply  above  his  forehead,  wearing  a  pair 
of  green  spectacles,  and  dressed  in  black  broadcloth. 
His  personal  aspect,  and  a  certain  solemnity  of  coun 
tenance,  led  me  to  think  he  must  be  a  clergyman; 
and  as  Master  Benjamin  Franklin  blurted  cut  before 
several  of  us  boarders,  one  day,  that  "  Sis  had  got  a 
beau,"  I  was  pleased  at  the  prospect  of  her  becoming 
a  minister's  wife.  On  inquiry,  however,  I  found 
that  the  somewhat  solemn  look  which  I  had  noticed 
was  indeed  a  professional  one,  but  not  clerical.  He 
was  a  young  undertaker,  who  had  just  succeeded  to  a 
thriving  business.  Things,  I  believe,  are  going  on 
well  at  this  time  of  writing,  and  I  am  glad  for  the 
landlady's  daughter  and  her  mother.  Sextons  and 
undertakers  are  the  cheerfullest  people  in  the  world 
at  home,  as  comedians  and  circus-clowns  are  the  most 
melancholy  in  their  domestic  circle. 

As  our  old  boarding-house  is  still  in  existence,  I  do 
not  feel  at  liberty  to  give  too  minute  a  statement  of 
the  present  condition  of  each  and  all  of  its  inmates. 
I  am  happy  to  say,  however,  that  they  are  all  alive 
and  well,  up  to  this  time.  That  amiable  old  gentle 
man  who  sat  opposite  to  me  is  growing  older,  as  old 
men  will,  but  still  smiles  benignantly  on  all  the  board 
ers,  and  has  come  to  be  a  kind  of  father  to  all  of 
them,  —  so  that  on  his  birthday  there  is  always  some 
thing  like  a  family  festival.  The  Poor  Relation,  even, 
has  warmed  into  a  filial  feeling  towards  him,  and  on 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.    313 

his  last  birthday  made  him  a  beautiful  present,  namely, 
a  very  handsomely  bound  copy  of  Blair's  celebrated 
poem,  "The  Grave." 

The  young  man  John  is  still,  as  he  says,  "  in  fust- 
rate  fettle."  I  saw  him  spar,  not  long  since,  at  a  pri 
vate  exhibition,  and  do  himself  great  credit  in  a  set-to 
with  Henry  Finnegass,  Esq.,  a  professional  gentle 
man  of  celebrity.  I  am  pleased  to  say  that  he  has 
been  promoted  to  an  upper  clerkship,  and,  in  conse 
quence  of  his  rise  in  office,  has  taken  an  apartment 
somewhat  lower  down  than  number  "forty-'leven,"  as 
he  facetiously  called  his  attic.  Whether  there  is  any 
truth,  or  not,  in  the  story  of  his  attachment  to,  and 
favorable  reception  by,  the  daughter  of  the  head  of  an 
extensive  wholesale  grocer's  establishment,  I  will  not 
venture  an  opinion;  I  may  say,  however,  that  I  have 
met  him  repeatedly  in  company  with  a  very  well-nour 
ished  and  high-colored  young  lady,  who,  I  understand, 
is  the  daughter  of  the  house  in  question. 

Some  of  the  boarders  were  of  opinion  that  Iris  did 
not  return  the  undisguised  attentions  of  the  handsome 
young  Marylander.  Instead  of  fixing  her  eyes  stead 
ily  on  him,  as  she  used  to  look  upon  the  Little  Gen 
tleman,  she  woidd  turn  them  away,  as  if  to  avoid  his 
own.  They  often  went  to  church  together,  it  is  true ; 
but  nobody,  of  course,  supposes  there  is  any  relation 
between  religious  sympathy  and  those  wretched  "sen 
timental  "  movements  of  the  human  heart  upon  which 
it  is  commonly  agreed  that  nothing  better  is  based 
than  society,  civilization,  friendship,  the  relation  of 
husband  and  wife,  and  of  parent  and  child,  and 
which  many  people  must  think  were  singularly  over 
rated  by  the  Teacher  of  Nazareth,  whose  whole  life, 
as  I  said  before,  was  full  of  sentiment,  loving  this  or 


314   THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that  young  man,  pardoning  this  or  that  sinner,  weep 
ing  over  the  dead,  mourning  for  the  doomed  city, 
blessing,  and  perhaps  kissing,  the  little  children,  — • 
so  that  the  Gospels  are  still  cried  over  almost  as  often 
as  the  last  work  of  fiction ! 

But  one  fine  June  morning  there  rumbled  up  to  the 
door  of  our  boarding-house  a  hack  containing  a  lady 
inside  and  a  trunk  on  the  outside.  It  was  our  friend 
the  lady-patroness  of  Miss  Iris,  the  same  who  had  been 
called  by  her  admiring  pastor  "  The  Model  of  all  the 
Virtues."  Once  a  week  she  had  written  a  letter,  in 
a  rather  formal  hand,  but  full  of  good  advice,  to  her 
young  charge.  And  now  she  had  come  to  carry  her 
away,  thinking  that  she  had  learned  all  she  was  likely 
to  learn  under  her  present  course  of  teaching.  The 
Model,  however,  was  to  stay  awhile,  —  a  week,  or 
more,  —  before  they  should  leave  together. 

Iris  was  obedient,  as  she  was  bound  to  be.  She 
was  respectful,  grateful,  as  a  child  is  with  a  just,  but 
not  tender  parent.  Yet  something  was  wrong.  She 
had  one  of  her  trances,  and  became  statue-like,  as 
before,  only  the  day  after  the  Model's  arrival.  She 
was  wan  and  silent,  tasted  nothing  at  table,  smiled 
as  if  by  a  forced  effort,  and  often  looked  vaguely  away 
from  those  who  were  looking  at  her,  her  eyes  just 
glazed  with  the  shining  moisture  of  a  tear  that  must 
not  be  allowed  to  gather  and  fall.  Was  it  grief  at 
parting  from  the  place  where  her  strange  friendship 
had  grown  up  with  the  Little  Gentleman?  Yet  she 
seemed  to  have  become  reconciled  to  his  loss,  and 
rather  to  have  a  deep  feeling  of  gratitude  that  she  had 
been  permitted  to  care  for  him  in  his  last  weary  days. 

The  Sunday  after  the  Model's  arrival,  that  lady  had 
an  attack  of  headache,  and  was  obliged  to  shut  her- 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST-TABLE.      315 

self  up  in  a  darkened  room  alone.  Our  two  young 
friends  took  the  opportunity  to  go  together  to  the 
Church  of  the  Galileans.  They  said  but  little  go 
ing, —  "collecting  their  thoughts"  for  the  service,  I 
devoutly  hope.  My  kind  good  friend  the  pastor 
preached  that  day  one  of  his  sermons  that  make  us  all 
feel  like  brothers  and  sisters,  and  his  text  was  that 
affectionate  one  from  John,  "My  little  children,  let 
us  not  love  in  word,  neither  in  tongue,  but  in  deed 
and  in  truth."  When  Iris  and  her  friend  came  out  of 
church,  they  were  both  pale,  and  walked  a  space  with 
out  speaking. 

At  last  the  young  man  said,  —  You  and  I  are  not 
little  children,  Iris! 

She  looked  in  his  face  an  instant,  as  if  startled,  for 
there  was  something  strange  in  the  tone  of  his  voice. 
She  smiled  faintly,  but  spoke  never  a  word. 

In  deed  and  in  truth,  Iris,  — 

What  shall  a  poor  girl  say  or  do,  when  a  strong 
man  falters  in  his  speech  before  her,  and  can  do  no 
thing  better  than  hold  out  his  hand  to  finish  his 
broken  sentence? 

The  poor  girl  said  nothing,  but  quietly  laid  her  un 
gloved  hand  in  his,  —  the  little  soft  white  hani  which 
had  ministered  so  tenderly  and  suffered  so  patiently. 

The  blood  came  back  to  the  young  man's  cheeks,  as 
he  lifted  it  to  his  lips,  even  as  they  walked  there  in 
the  street,  touched  it  gently  with  them,  and  said,  — 
"It  is  mine!" 

Iris  did  not  contradict  him. 


The  seasons  pass  by  so  rapidly,  that  I  am  startled 
to  think  how  much  has  happened  since  these  events  I 


316     THE   PROFESSOR  AT   THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was  describing.  Those  two  young  people  would  in 
sist  on  having  their  own  way  about  their  own  affairs, 
notwithstanding  the  good  lady,  so  justly  called  the 
Model,  insisted  that  the  age  of  twenty -five  years  was 
as  early  as  any  discreet  young  lady  should  think  of 
incurring  the  responsibilities,  etc.,  etc.  Long  before 
Iris  had  reached  that  age,  she  was  the  wife  of  a  young 
Maryland  engineer,  directing  some  of  the  vast  con 
structions  of  his  native  State,  —  where  he  was  grow 
ing  rich  fast  enough  to  be  able  to  decline  that  famous 
Russian  offer  which  would  have  made  him  a  kind  of 
nabob  in  a  few  years.  Iris  does  not  write  verse  often, 
nowadays,  but  she  sometimes  draws.  The  last  sketch 
of  hers  I  have  seen  in  my  Southern  visits  was  of  two 
children,  a  boy  and  girl,  the  youngest  holding  a  silver 
goblet,  like  the  one  she  held  that  evening  when  I  — 
I  was  so  struck  with  her  statue-like  beauty.  If  in 
the  later  summer  months  you  find  the  grass  marked 
with  footsteps  around  that  grave  on  Copp's  Hill  I 
told  you  of,  and  flowers  scattered  over  it,  you  may  be 
sure  that  Iris  is  here  on  her  annual  visit  to  the  home 
of  her  childhood  and  that  excellent  lady  whose  only 
fault  was,  that  Nature  had  written  out  her  list  of 
virtues  on  ruled  paper,  and  forgotten  to  rub  out  the 
lines. 

One  thing  more  I  must  mention.  Being  on  the 
Common,  last  Sunday,  I  was  attracted  by  the  cheerful 
spectacle  of  a  well-dressed  and  somewhat  youthful 
papa  wheeling  a  very  elegant  little  carriage  containing 
a  stout  baby.  A  buxom  young  lady  watched  them 
from  one  of  the  stone  seats,  with  an  interest  which 
could  be  nothing  less  than  maternal.  I  at  once  recog 
nized  my  old  friend,  the  young  fellow  whom  we  called 
John.  He  was  delighted  to  see  me,  introduced  me  to 


THE   PROFESSOR  AT    THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    317 

"Madam,"  and  would  have  the  lusty  infant  out  of 
the  carriage,  and  hold  him  up  for  me  to  look  at. 

Now,  then,  —  he  said  to  the  two-year-old,  —  show 
the    gentleman   how  you   hit   from   the    shoulder.  — 
\Yhereupon  the  little  imp  pushed  his  fat  fist  straight 
into  my  eye,  to  his  father's  intense  satisfaction. 

Fust-rate  little  chap,  —  said  the  papa.  —  Chip  of 
the  old  block.  Regl'r  little  Johnny,  you  know. 

I  was  so  much  pleased  to  find  the  young  fellow 
settled  in  life,  and  pushing  about  one  of  "them  little 
articles  "  he  had  seemed  to  want  so  much,  that  I  took 
my  "punishment"  at  the  hands  of  the  infant  pugilist 
with  great  equanimity.  —  And  how  is  the  old  board 
ing-house  ?  —  I  asked. 

A  1, — he  answered. — Painted  and  papered  as 
good  as  new.  Gahs  in  all  the  rooms  up  to  the  sky- 
parlors.  Old  woman  's  layin'  up  money,  they  say. 
Means  to  send  Ben  Franklin  to  college.  — Just  then 
the  first  bell  rang  for  church,  and  my  friend,  who,  I 
understand,  has  become  a  most  exemplary  member  of 
society,  said  he  must  be  off  to  get  ready  for  meetin', 
and  told  the  young  one  to  "shake  dada,"  which  he  did 
with  his  closed  fist,  in  a  somewhat  menacing  manner. 
And  so  the  young  man  John,  as  we  used  to  call  him, 
took  the  pole  of  the  miniature  carriage,  and  pushed 
the  small  pugilist  before  him  homewards,  followed,  in 
a  somewhat  leisurely  way,  by  his  pleasant-looking 
lady-companion,  and  I  sent  a  sigh  and  a  smile  after 
him. 

'That  evening,  as  soon  as  it  was  dark,  I  could  not 
help  going  round  by  the  old  boarding-house.  The 
"gahs"  was  lighted,  but  the  curtains,  or  more  prop 
erly,  the  painted  shades,  were  not  down.  And  so  I 
stood  there  and  looked  in  along  the  tablo  where  the 


818    THE  PEOFESSOK  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

boarders  sat  at  the  evening  meal,  —  our  old  break 
fast-table,  which  some  of  us  feel  as  if  we  knew  so 
well.  There  were  new  faces  at  it,  but  also  old  and 
familiar  ones.  —  The  landlady,  in  a  wonderfully  smart 
cap,  looking  young,  comparatively  speaking,  and  as  if 
half  the  wrinkles  had  been  ironed  out  of  her  forehead. 
—  Her  daughter,  in  rather  dressy  half -mourning,  with 
a  vast  brooch  of  jet,  got  up,  apparently,  to  match  the 
gentleman  next  her,  who  was  in  black  costume  and 
sandy  hair,  —  the  last  rising  straight  from  his  fore 
head,  like  the  marble  flame  one  sometimes  sees  at  the 
top  of  a  funeral  urn.  —  The  Poor  Relation,  not  in 
absolute  black,  but  in  a  stuff  with  specks  of  white ;  as 
much  as  to  say,  that,  if  there  were  any  more  Hiranis 
left  to  sigh  for  her,  there  were  pin-holes  in  the  night 
of  her  despair,  through  which  a  ray  of  hope  might  find 
its  way  to  an  adorer.  —  Master  Benjamin  Franklin, 
grown  taller  of  late,  was  in  the  act  of  splitting  his 
face  open  with  a  wedge  of  pie,  so  that  his  features 
were  seen  to  disadvantage  for  the  moment.  —  The 
good  old  gentleman  was  sitting  still  and  thoughtful. 
All  at  once  he  turned  his  face  toward  the  window 
where  I  stood,  and,  just  as  if  he  had  seen  me,  smiled 
his  benignant  smile.  It  was  a  recollection  of  some 
past  pleasant  moment ;  but  it  fell  upon  me  like  the 
blessing  of  a  father. 

I  kissed  my  hand  to  them  all,  unseen  as  I  stood  in 
the  outer  darkness;  and  as  I  turned  and  went  my 
way,  the  table  and  all  around  it  faded  into  the  realm 
of  twilight  shadows  and  of  midnight  dreams. 


And  so  my  year's  record  is  finished.     The  Profes 
sor  has  talked  less  than  his  predecessor,  but  he  has 


THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE   BREAKFAST-TABLE.    319 

heard  and  seen  more.  Thanks  to  all  those  friends 
who  from  time  to  time  have  sent  their  messages  of 
kindly  recognition  and  fellow-feeling!  Peace  to  all 
such  as  may  have  been  vexed  in  spirit  by  any  utter 
ance  these  pages  have  repeated !  They  will,  doubtless, 
forget  for  ths  moment  the  difference  in  the  hues  of 
truth  we  look  at  through  our  human  prisms,  and  join 
in  singing;  (inwardly)  this  hymn  to  the  Source  of  the 
light  we  all  need  to  lead  us,  and  the  warmth  which 
alone  can  make  us  all  brothers. 

A  SUN-DAY  HYMN. 

Lord  of  all  being  !  throned  afar, 
Thy  glory  flames  from  sun  and  star, 
Centre  and  soul  of  every  sphere, 
Yet  to  each  loving  heart  how  near  I 

Sun  of  our  life,  thy  quickening  ray 
Sheds  on  onr  path  the  glow  of  day  ; 
Star  of  our  hope,  thy  softened  light 
Cheers  the  long  watches  of  the  night. 

Our  midnight  is  thy  smile  withdrawn; 
Our  noontide  is  thy  gracious  dawn  ; 
Our  rainbow  arch  thy  mercy's  sign  ; 
All,  save  the  clouds  of  sin,  are  thine  I 

Lord  of  all  life,  below,  above, 

Whose  light  is  truth,  whose  warmth  is  love, 

Before  thy  ever-blazing  throne 

We  ask  no  lustre  of  our  own. 

Grant  us  thy  truth  to  make  us  free, 
And  kindling  hearts  that  burn  for  thee, 
Till  all  thy  living  altars  claim 
One  holy  light,  one  heavenly  flame. 


INDEX. 


ABORIGINES,  called  the  provisional  races, 
82.  See  also  Indians. 

Abstinence,  total,  better  than  brutali 
ties,  33. 

Abuse,  flattery  of,  202. 

Acts,  good  and  bad,  may  not  be  forgot 
ten,  233. 

Adams,  Samuel,  at  Commencement,  41 ; 
as  governor,  42. 

Addison's  dying  sentiment,  292. 

Advertisement,  imaginary,  of  imple 
ments  of  torture,  207. 

Affections,  need  of  the  soul  for,  249. 

Affinity  in  love,  159 ;  manifestations  of, 
182,  291. 

Age,  impressions  of,  in  poets  and  chil 
dren,  239. 

Agreeable,  the  wish  to  be,  is  essence  of 
gentle  breeding,  133. 

Ails  and  grievances,  talking  of,  139. 

Air  of  Old  World  used  up,  249 ;  New 
England's  air  better  than  Old  Eng 
land's  ale,  250. 

Albiness,  80. 

Aldiboroutiphoscophornio,  19. 

Alembic,  in  Henchman's  shop,  231. 

Allein's  "Alarm,"  277. 

Allen,  Ethan,  strength  of  teeth,  46. 

Allen,  Mrs.,  her  hair-restorer,  79,  311. 

American,  every,  owns  all  America,  86. 

American  idea  of  freedom  is  congenital, 
81. 

American  young  man,  opportunities  of, 
283. 

Americanization  of  religion,  207. 

Ananias,  supposed  critic  of  lecture,  120. 

Anges,  a  vulgar  error  for  Agnes,  95. 

Animals,  eccentrically  formed,  236. 

Anonymous  scribblers,  118. 

Ant,  red,  245. 

Aphorism,  by  the  Professor,  57. 

Apologizing,  egotism  wrong  side  out, 
139. 

Apron  strings  of  American  mother  made 
of  India  rubber,  285. 

Archimedes,  grave  of,  247. 

Architecture,  an  imperfect  copy  of  some 
divine  rule,  241. 


Ark,  Christianity  compared  to  an,  218. 

Arm,  beautiful  cast  of,  48 ;  fine  arm  of 
cripple,  100,  259  ;  sketch  of  fine,  236  ; 
strength  momentarily  centred  in,  237. 

Arrowheads,  Indian,  245. 

Artistic  nature,  frankness  of,  221. 

Artist's  method  of  securing  portrait, 
191. 

Assimilation  of  ourselves  to  external 
object  of  interest,  156  ;  further  illus 
tration  of,  190. 

Atmosphere,  moral  effects  upon  char 
acter,  242. 

Atrophy  of  heart,  women  subject  to, 
249. 

Audacity,  in  young  girls,  222. 

Auto-da-fe,  the  last,  208. 

Autocrat,  17,  18,  21,  22. 

Averages,  close  law  of,  166. 

Balaklava,  Capt.  Nolan  at,  251. 

Balloon,  toy,  108. 

Balloon-voyagers,  228. 

Baltimore,  called  the  gastronomic  me 
tropolis  of  the  Union,  84. 

Barbarism/3  in  medicine,  105  ;  in  law, 
106 ;  in  religion,  106. 

Barnum  presenting  Ossian  E.  Dodge  to 
Jenny  Lined,  picture  of,  165. 

Bartolozzi's  peppery  burin,  29. 

Baskerville  quarto  of  Virgil,  61. 

Basle,  Dance  of  Death  at,  266. 

Battle  of  the  Standard  for  liberty  to 
each  soul,  78. 

Beauty,  human,  283. 

Bee's  architecture,  241. 

Being,  great  end  of,  1,  4. 

Benjamin  Franklin,  the  Landlady's  son, 
4,  21,  etc. 

Bentham's  logic  against  ghosts,  189. 

Berkshire  mountains,  245. 

Bible,  a  seeming  defense  of  right  to  have 
three  wives  derived  from,  5 ;  scepti 
cism  afraid  of  new  translations,  7  ;  re 
sorted  to  from  different  motives,  122. 

Bigelow,  George  Tyler,  49. 

Billiard-ball,  the  Model  of  all  the  Vir- 
tues  compared  to,  71. 


822 


HTDEX. 


Birds,  which  have  no  fear,  96 ;  sketch 
of  solitary,  238. 
Canary,  94. 
Heron,  230. 
Purple  finch,  294. 
Birth,  a  second  natural,  243. 
Biscuit,   called  "  crackers  "  in  Boston, 

169. 

Blackberry,  low  bush,  187. 
Blessed    Virgin,     torturiug-implement, 

208. 

Blondes,  "  positive  "  variety  of,  54, 222 ; 
the  '•  negative  "  variety,  222 ;  spiritual 
transparency  of,  229. 
Blood,  enormous  number  of  swimming 

glands  in,  59. 
Bloomer  costume,  155. 
Boarders,  peculiar,  168. 
Boarding  -  house,  the,  arrangements  of 
boarders  hi,  21 ;  unprotected  girls  in, 
223. 
Boarding-house  fare,  168 ;  limitations  as 

to  quantity,  169. 
Bodies,  looked  on  only  as  a  temporal 

possession,  193. 
Bombazine,   a  sobriquet   for  the   Poor 

Relation,  which  see. 
Book  of  the  three  maiden  sisters,  230. 
Books,  their  greeting,  29;   old  books, 

210. 

Boot,  cast-iron,  207. 

Boston,  the  Little  Gentleman's  prido  in, 
3 ;    has    opened    turnpikes    to    free 
thought  and  speech,  3  ;  early  patriots 
in,  15;  great  macadamizing  place,  16; 
has  much  of  England  about  it,  45  ;  the 
battle  of  the  three-hilled  r.gainst  the 
seven-billed  city,  78 ;  sunsets  in,  82 ; 
thinking    centre  of    the  planet,   83; 
wealth  and  influence  in,  fairly  divided, 
84;  evil  results  of  sneering  at,  281; 
heart  of  the  world  under  it,  301. 
Localities  mentioned  : 
Christ  Church,  307. 
Common,  42,  316. 
Copp's  Hill  burying-grouftd,  3,  306, 

316. 

Faneuil  Hall,  3. 
Frog-pond,  3. 
Hancock  house,  42. 
North  End,  3. 
Park  Strpet  Church,  11. 
Quincy  Market,  196. 
State  House,  55,  217. 
West  Boston  Bridge,  2. 
Boy,  a  healthv,  finds  nothing  in  com 
mon  with  child  of  weakened  vitality, 
194. 
"Bov  of  Windennere,"  Wordsworth's, 

160. 

Boys,  The,  49. 
Braham.  anecdote  of    his  forgetting  a 

song,  24. 

Brain,  possibility  of  running  dry,  22 ; 
Byron's  small  brain,  200  ;  soul  in  core 
of,  according  to  Descartes,  247 ;  a 
wick  of  the  lamp  of  life,  260. 


Brainey,    Professor,   his   phrenological 

analysis  of  faculties,  201. 
Brains,  close  resemblance,  167. 
Breathing,    difficult    in   heart   disease, 

257. 
Breeding,  gentle,  lies  hi  the  wish  to  be 

agreeable,  133 ;  takes  everything  cool 
ly,  142. 
Bridget,  maidservant  in  Boarding-house, 

insists  that  Little  Gentleman  was  a 

Catholic,  309. 

Briuvilliers,  Marchioness  de,  305. 
Britons'  stockades,  245. 
Broad  church,  296  ;  must  have  its  creed 

in  the  heart  and  not  in  head,  298. 
Bryant,  109. 
Buffaloes,  236. 
Bumps.    See  Phrenology. 
Bumpus  and  Crane,  Messrs.,  their  Phy- 

tiological    emporium    of    phrenology, 

l'J6. 
Ban,  'lection,  42 ;  offered  before  dinner 

as  a  test  of  age,  57. 
Burns,  241. 
Burns  centenary,  26. 
Burroughs,  George,  262. 
Buttercups,  231. 
Byron's  small  brain,  200 ;  his  deformity, 

278. 

Cabinet,  mysterious,  contents  of,  304. 

Cabinet  deisk,  discovery  of  a  secret 
drawer  in,  91. 

Cadeuus,  captivating  Stella  and  Vanessa, 
89. 

Calef,  Robert,  burning  of  hia  book  on 
witchcraft,  8. 

Callouses,  2^9. 

Calomel,  efficacy  in  creed  of  supposed 
medical  society,  112. 

Calvin,  in  a  state  of  religious  barbarism, 
106. 

Camel,  236. 

Canoe  Meadow,  in  Berkshire  mountains, 
245. 

Cantabridge,  three  maiden  sisters  at, 
230  ;  arrowheads  found  there,  245. 

Cape  Ann,  magnolia  on.  244. 

Caravan  hastening  over  desert,  dying 
compared  to,  276. 

Catalepsy,  237. 

Cavern,  sunless,  under  road,  179. 

Chamber,  the  Little  Gentleman's,  the 
Professor's  entrance  into,  255 :  solu 
tion  of  the  mysteries  in,  307-309. 

Chancery,  court  of,  106. 

Channing,  16 ;  his  Baltimore  discourse, 
117. 

Character,  must  have  a  weak  spot  or 
two  bsfore  we  can  love  it,  72 ;  study 
of  by  triangulation,  90 ;  eenins  should 
marry.  287  ;  its  force  in  life,  288. 

Charles  River,  246. 

Charter   Alain,  kiss  given,  268. 

Chatterton,  241. 

Check-book,  Autocrat's  experience  with, 
22. 


INDEX. 


828 


Cheerfulness,  desirable  in  a  doctor,  143 ; 
in  a  clergyman,  144. 

Chelsea  beach,  gathering  of  annuals  on, 
164. 

Chelsea  ferry-boats,  289. 

Chemist's  shop,  library  compared  to,  25. 

Chess-players,  evenly  matched,  167. 

Childhood,  impressions  of,  186-189. 

Children,  their  disgust  for  heaven,  185  ; 
indifference  to  earthly  things,  193 ; 
some  are  like  windfalls,  lilt ;  disgust 
excited  in  healthy  childhood  by  in 
stances  of  early  spiritual  development, 
194,  195 ;  directness  of  logic,  209 ; 
aged  features  in  some,  239. 

Chinese  gentlemen,  talking  without 
meaning,  30. 

Christ,  his  londness  for  talking  at  meat, 
32 ;  loved  healthy  as  well  as  sickly 
children,  195 ;  life  full  of  sentiment, 
313. 

Christ  Church,  Boston,  307. 

Christabel,  Coleridge's,  quoted,  208. 

Christian  equality,  alone  can  prevent 
social  divisions,  134. 

Christianity,  compared  to  an  ark,  218 ; 
slow  work  launching  it,  219 ;  full  of 
sentiment,  302. 

Church,  Impossibility  of  a  universal, 
290 ;  compared  to  a  garden,  29(5. 

Church  of  S.iiut  Pplycarp,  211. 

Church  of  tho  Galileans,  its  simple  wor 
ship,  213. 

Cigars,  137. 

Cities,  American,  comparisons  of,  84-87. 

Civilization,  as  influenced  by  clergy,  8  ; 
in  danger  of  senile  dementia,  11  ;  con 
fronting  of  two  civilizations,  3G;  ne 
cessities  of  modern,  283.' 

Clark,  William,  his  epitaph,  306. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  49. 

Classes,  spiritual  standard  of  different, 
121. 

Clerjry,  their  part  in  civilization,  8  ;  re 
spect  expressed  for,  104;  should  be 
cheerful,  144.  Se-  also  Ministers. 

Clowns,  melancholy  people,  312. 

Club-foot,  9. 

Coarse  people  in  the  professions,  2C3. 

Coffin,  Admiral  Gir  Isaac,  52. 

Coincidenceo,  5C ;  curious  instance  of, 
68. 

Coleridge's  Christabel  quoted,  208. 

Colleee  dormitory,  strange  breach  In 
walls  of,  187. 

College  libraries,  fated  to  burn  up,  62. 

College  theatricals,  17. 

College  trick,  58. 

Comedians,  melancholy  people,  312. 

Common  sense,  watchfulness  of,  89. 

Commons  boarders  at  Harvard  College, 
a  trick  of,  58. 

Comparison  of  merits  in  American  cit 
ies,  86. 

Compensation,  an  instance  of,  in  the  sen 
sibility  accompanying  early  decay, 


Complexion,  fresh,  45. 
Congregational  singing,  215 ;  imperfec 
tions  of,  216. 
Conscience,  its  approval  or  disapproval, 

209. 

Conservative,  a  bad  sort  portrayed,  15. 
Consistent    people    apt    to    contradict 

themselves,  34. 
Consolations  ot  religion,  292. 
Conspirators  painted  of  dark  hue,  229. 
Contagion  in  sickness,  119. 
Contracts  written  in  blood,  189. 
Conversation,  with  a  stranger,  30 ;  me 
chanical  talk  of  pretty   women,  30 ; 

women  can  keep  their  minds  detached 

from  their   talk,  31 ;   skirmishing  at 

beginning    of,   35 ;    easiness    in,   139. 

See  also  Talking. 
Copley,  183 ;  dreesing-gown  affected  in 

his  pictures,  186. 

Copp's  Hill  bury  ing-ground,  3,  306,  316. 
Coral-reef  island,  if  inhabited  by  one 

man,  pretty  woman  would  soon  appear 

upon.  51. 

Cosmetic,  Mrs.  Allen's,  79. 
Cornelia,  mother  of  the  Gracchi,  288. 
Coughs,  ingratitude  of,  132. 
Counterpart,  precise,  not  necessary  for 

marriage,  287. 
Counting  on  time  excites  nervousness, 

255. 
Country  boy,  apt  to  betray  his   early 

ways  of  life,  44. 
Cowper  quoted,  183. 
"  Crackers, 1?  word  used  in  Boston  for 

biscuit,  169. 
Crazy  people,  most  of  them  found  where 

the  battle  of  intelligence  is  fought, 

218. 
Creation,  Usher's  precise  date  of,  113, 

210. 
Creatures,    an    Eden    of   humped    and 

crooked,  236. 
Creed,  a  child's,  210  ;  all  have  much  In 

common,  216 ;  of  the  heart,  298. 
Creed  of  supposed  medical  society,  111, 

112. 
Critics,  the  chips  left  after  authors  were 

manufactured,  25  ;  their  painful  duty 

of  reminding  authors  of  their  decline 

of  power,  26. 
Crocked  Footpath,  102. 
Crowninshield,  Francis  Boardman,  49. 
Crows'  nests,  222. 
Crucifix,  ivory,  304. 
Curiosity,  invariable  in  mature  females, 

252 ;  resembles  fear,  255. 
Curtis,  Benjamin  Robbine,  1809-1874, 50. 

Daguerreotype,  give  features  one  par 
ticular  l-.ok,  191. 
Daisies,  234. 

Dance  of  Death  at  Basle,  266. 
Dandelions,  231. 

Dark,  its  effect  upon  tadpoles,  242. 
Darwin,  Dr.,  82. 
Davis,  George  Thomas,  49. 


INDEX. 


Dead,  the,  interest  in  their  destiny, 
107. 

Dead  man's  hand,  swelling  cured  by, 
246. 

Deaf  mute  child,  229. 

Death,  idea  of  rest  inseparable  from, 
276 ;  making  ready  for,  291  293 ;  pres 
ence  of,  304. 

Death-bed  literature,  291. 

Death  of  Latin  tutor,  65. 

Deborah,  less  agreeable  than  Queen 
Esther,  136. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  meaning 
of,  295. 

Deformity,  idealization  of,  236  ;  life-long 
suffering  from,  263,  265,  301. 

Deity,  human  life  as  compared  to,  10. 

Dentists,  112. 

Depolarization,  of  religious  thought, 
6 ;  of  sacred  books,  117  ;  further  men 
tioned,  126. 

De  Quincey's  Opium-Eater,  238. 

De  Sauty,  26. 

Descartes,  his  location  of  the  soul,  247. 

"  Devil's  footsteps  "  in  pastures,  187. 

Dewberry,  187. 

Diagnosis,  the  Professor's,  of  the  Little 
Gentleman,  258. 

Diaphragm,  moral  effects  of  disease 
above  and  below,  293. 

Diary,  pathetic  minuteness  of  a,  232. 

Dictionaries,  English,  "  Webster's  Un 
abridged,"  40;  rivalry  of  various,  44. 

Dido,  61. 

Dinners,  wine  a  specific  against  dull,  32. 

Discobolus,  283. 

Discussion,  fear  of,  109. 

Disease,  dismantling  process  of,  130. 

Distinctions,  social,  134. 

Divinity  student,  a  character  who  gen 
erally  argues  with  the  Professor  more 
abstruse  questions  which  arise  at  the 
Boarding-house  table  ;  prays  with  the 
Little  Gentleman  while  dying,  302 ; 
finally  engaged  to  marry  the  sister  of 
the  Schoolmistress,  309. 

Doctor,  childish  fear  of  a,  69 ;  should 
always  inspire  hope,  143. 

Dorcas,  death  of,  233. 

Dorchester  burying-ground,  263. 

Dorchester,  pudding-stone  at,  256. 

Dowdyism,  an  expression  of  imperfect 
vitality,  136. 

Dragon,  fire  compared  to,  158. 

Drawing,  early  childish  efforts  of  Iris, 
69. 

Drawing-book  of  Iris,  173,  184 ;  disclos 
ure  of  its  contents,  228. 

Dromedary,  236. 

Drugs,  a  bad  thing,  12. 

Dry  crying,  76. 

Dull  people,  290. 

Dying,  compared  to  moving,  276  ;  much 
sagacity  shown  in  patient's  estimate 
of  his  condition,  277.  See  also  Death. 

Dying,  the,  testimony  of,  to  be  received 
with  caution,  292  ;  torturing  for  evi 


dence  in  favor  of  certain  belief,  293 ; 
in  the  worst  position  to  give  opinions, 
293.  See  also  Death. 

Ear-rings,  99. 

Early  piety,  instance  of,  67. 

Earth,  sweet  smell  of  fresh,  265. 

Eating,  readiness  for,  at  any  hour,  a  test 
of  youth,  57. 

Eccentrically  formed  animals,  236. 

Ectopia  cordis,  259. 

Eden,  an,  of  humped  and  crooked  crea 
tures,  236. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  the  elder,  114. 

Egg-pop,  on  holidays  in  Boston,  3. 

Ehud,  119. 

Election  bun,  42. 

Elective  character  of  social  position,  135. 

Elpit,  a  boy  christened  Lord  Pitt,  called, 
95. 

Elsie  Venner,  illustrates  author's  theory 
of  the  will,  35 n. 

Engagements,  286. 

Englishman,  lives  and  dies  under  pro 
test,  81. 

Epileptics,  nitrate  of  silver  for,  105. 

Equality  and  the  quality,  133 ;  only  an 
ideal  Christian  equality  can  prevent 
social  divisions,  134. 

Equilibrium,  human  beings  cannot  long 
rest  in  state  of,  275. 

Essex  county,  244. 

Esther,  queen,  136. 

Everlasting,  herb,  187. 

Evil,  prophet  of,  dreadful  business  of 
being,  252. 

Execution  of  Holloway  and  Haggerty, 
crush  at,  188. 

Eyes  of  a  cripple,  88. 

Faces,  some  women's,  a  revelation  of  a 
great  secret,  178 ;  influence  of  a  girl's 
face,  181  ;  we  have  different  ones  for 
different  persons,  191 ;  analysis  of,  in 
ancestral  elements,  193  ;  face  or  figure, 
which  the  more  attractive,  204 ; 
sketched  on  borders  of  drawing-book, 
238. 

Facts,  remote,  collision  of,  56. 

Fair,  English,  properly  conducted  fight 
at,  52. 

Faith,  is  self-reliance,  93. 

Fancies,  beliefs  frighten  less  than,  162. 

Fashion,  intensely  alive,  136,  150  ;  an 
attempt  to  realize  art  in  living  forms, 
151 ;  foolfsh  talk  about,  152.  See  also 
Society. 

Fashionable  people.    See  Society. 

Fat  man,  132. 

Fear,  resemblance  of  nervousness  to, 
255. 

F^rry-boats,  Chelsea,  289. 

Fight,  between  a  Marylander  and  a 
butcher,  51  ;  well-conducted  fight  at 
English  fair,  52  ;  all  of  us  have  a  little 
speck  of,  52  ;  between  John  and  the 
Koh-i-noor,  279. 


INDEX. 


325 


Fighting-boy  of  school,  his  paleness 
before  contest,  2C8. 

Fighting  gladiator,  236. 

Figure  or  face,  which  the  more  attrac 
tive,  204. 

Finch,  purple,  in  cage,  94. 

Finnegass,  Henry,  Esq.,  313. 

Fire,  compared  to  a  dragon,  158. 

First  old  age,  an  infant's  life  has  char 
acter  of,  66. 

Fishes,  in  sunless  cavern,  179  ;  trans 
parency  of  small  kinds,  229. 

Fists,  rotary  motion  of,  18. 

Flattery,  more  agreeable  when  acted 
than  when  spoken,  136  ;  a  woman's 
subtle  method  of,  137  ;  of  abuse,  202. 

Florence,  85. 

Flournoy,  J.  J.,  his  dissertation  on  the 
marrying  of  three  wives,  5. 

Flowers  in   church,  214  ;  sketches  of  in 
drawing-book,  234 ;  in  old  garden,  248. 
Flowers  and  plants,  namely : 
Blackberry,  187. 
Buttercups,  231. 
Daisies,  234. 
Dandelions,  231. 
Honeysuckle,  248. 
Mignonette,  182. 

Fluid  as  typifying  the  mobility  of  re 
stricted  will,  34. 

Folly  often  teaches  wisdom,  13. 

Forests,  built  up  mainly  from  air  cur 
rents,  67. 

Fork,  trirk  of  impaling  meat  with,  at 
Harvard  Commons  table,  58. 

Fountain,  genius  compared  to,  288. 

Foxglove,  261. 

Fra  Angelico,  two  faces  by,  178. 

Franklin,  not  ashamed  to  be  born  in 
Boston,  15;  ballad  by,  mentioned, 
306. 

Free  thought  and  speech,  Boston's  in 
fluence  for,  3. 

Freedom,  in  America  and  England,  81 ; 
religious  and  political  must  be  main 
tained,  125. 

Freemasonry,  298. 

Freethinker,  a  term  of  reproach  in  Eng 
land,  81. 

Frog-pond,  3,  281. 

Fuller's  "  Holy  War,"  235. 

"Gahs,"  Boarding-house  lighted  with, 
317. 

Gambrel-roofed  house,  188 ;  mention  of 
another,  230. 

Genius,  an  end  of,  when  its  special  af 
finities  are  worked  out,  25  ;  a  union  of 
strength  and  sensibility,  223;  com 
pared  with  talent,  240 ;  should  marry 
character,  287  ;  wife  of,  compared  to 
tug  invisibly  drawing  tall  ship,  289 ; 
truthfulness  is  essence  of,  290. 

Gentility,  humanity  comes  before,  145 ; 
pretensions  to,  153. 

Gentleman,  misuse  of  the  word,  144 ; 
what  constitutes,  204. 


Ghosts,  Bentham's  logic  against,  189; 
false,  257. 

Girls,  a  beautiful  girl  is  a  terrible  fact, 
176 ;  influence  of  a  girl's  face,  181 ; 
strange  audacity  often  blended  with 
delicacy  in  young  girls,  222;  unpro 
tected  girls  in  boarding-houses,  223; 
depths  of  their  nature,  228;  revela 
tions  of  soul  of  a  girl  through  her 
poems  and  drawings,  229-240. 

Goldsmith's  Madam  Blaize  borrowed 
from  the  French,  231. 

Golden  book  of  Venice,  86. 

Gracchi,  288. 

Gravel,  clean,  an  anodyne,  265. 

Great  secret,  a,  intimations  of  in  many 
person,  177 ;  it  is  not  the  secret  of 
love,  180. 

Great  Teacher,  the,  32. 

Greek  young  men,  beauty  of,  283. 

Groom,  Yorkshire,  fight  with  sophomore, 
53. 

Guarnerius  violin,  308. 

Gulf  Stream,  14. 

Gulliver,  247. 

Hair,  variety  of,  80. 

Hairspring  of  watch,  meddling  with,  43. 

Hancock  house,  Boston,  42. 

Hand,  influence  of  a  cold,  damp,  71 ;  of 
dead  man  cures  swellings,  246. 

Harry,  a  handsome  Marylander,  51 ;  in 
fight  with  butcher  on  muster-day,  52. 

Harvard  College,  burning  of  Calef's 
book  in  yard,  8 ;  Samuel  Adams  at 
Commencement,  41 ;  trick  at  Com 
mons  table,  58 ;  mysterious  breach  in 
wall  of  dormitory,  187. 

Haunted  house,  fear  of,  162. 

Head,  double  walls  of,  unfavorable  to 
phrenology,  199. 

Healing  art,  its  professional  hardness, 
263. 

Heart,  wild,  hidden  under  outer  deco 
rum,  94,  158 ;  full  of  combustibles, 
159  ;  our  own  hearts  held  to  home 
by  innumerable  fibres,  247  ;  a  wick  of 
lamp  of  life,  260 ;  women  subject  to 
atrophy  of,  249 ;  displacement  of,  259  ; 
creed  of  the  heart,  298. 

Heart  disease,  251 ;  difficult  breathing 
in,  257. 

Heathen,  goodness  of,  12. 

Heaven,  inward  disgust  for,  in  children, 
185. 

Henchman's  apothecary  shop,  231. 

Hercules,  89. 

Heredity,  some  qualities  not  easily  ac 
counted  for  in,  68. 

Heresy,  a  word  fallen  into  disuse,  118. 

Heretic  hung  in  painted  hogshead,  208. 

Heroic  will,  the,  205. 

Heroism  of  fashionable  people,  140. 

Herons,  236. 

Hezekiah's  advice,  23. 

Higginson,  Francis,  saying  of  250, 

Hingham  boxes,  299. 


326 


INDEX. 


"Hiram,"  name  written  on  old  piece 
of  paper,  93 ;  uncouthnesa  of  name, 
95. 

Hollow  beneath  a  road,  179. 

Holloway  and  Haggerty,  crush  at  execu 
tion  of,  188. 

Holmes  house  in  Cambridge,  188. 

Holyoke,  Dr.,  8. 

Home,  poets  want  a,  246;  associations 
with,  247. 

Homoeopathy,  12. 

Honeysuckle,  248. 

Hopkins,  Samuel,  16. 

Horse-mackerel,  taken  for  sea-serpent, 
257. 

Horses,  friskiness  of,  in  cool  morning, 
14 ;  two  sent  to  Massachusetts  by  Ad 
miral  Coffin,  53  ;  close  average  of  fast 
time  in  trotters,  ICG ;  litt  of  official 
records,  166  n.  ;  Norinau  breed,  236. 
Dexter,  166  n. 
Ethan  Allen,  166. 
Flora  Temple,  166. 
Goldsmith  Maid,  166n. 
Lady  Suffolk,  166. 
Maud  S.,  166  n. 

Hottentot,  peculiar  hair  of,  80. 

Houbraken,  print  by,  29. 

House,  old  gambrel-roofed,  188 ;  another, 
230 ;  fear  of  the  old  house,  262. 

House  tfn  fire,  158. 

Hue's  anecdote  of  Chinese  gentleman, 
30. 

Human  being,  to  tell  whether  it  is  young 
or  old,  57. 

Humanity,  America  has  a  different  one 
from  Europe,  122  ;  comes  before  gen 
tility,  145 ;  tenderness  for,  217. 

Hurry,  vulgar  to  be  in  a,  139. 

Husbands  and  wives  grow  to  look  alike, 

156  ;  the  sort  of  men  women  take  for, 

157  ;  those  of  women  of  genius  must 
be  true,  not  great  men,  290. 

Hyperbola,  237. 
Hymn  of  Trust,  282. 
Hysteric  ball,  96. 

"  I  love  you,"  all  that  many  women  have 

to  tell,  180. 

Iceberg,  slight  effect  of  sun  on,  288. 
Iconoclasm,  only  way  to  get  at  truth, 

117. 
Ideas,    difficulty  of  transmission    does 

not  imply  lack  of,  25 ;  interpenetra- 

tion  of,  better  than  mere  courtesy, 

36. 
Impressions,  enormous  number  of,  58 ; 

of  childhood,  186-189. 
Independence    and     Union,    two    hard 

words  to  spell,  41 . 
Indians,  only  a  provisional  race,  83  ;  no 

individuality  in  their  history,  245. 
Individuality,   good   breeding  does  not 

overestimate,  140 ;  none  in  history  of 

Indians,  245. 
Infirmity,  liable  to  leave  injurious  ef- 

f  acts  on  the  race,  20. 


Insanity,  great  amount  of,  wherever  the 
battle  of  intelligence  is  fought,  218. 

Instinct,  more  divine  than  reason,  241. 

Intellect  in  a  woman  should  travel  to 
lips  through  the  heart,  147  ;  no  fusion 
of,  likely,  297. 

Interpenetration  of  ideas,  better  than 
mere  courtesy,  36. 

Iris,  daughter  of  the  Latin  tutor ;  a  de 
scription  of,  54 ;  her  story  told  by 
Professor,  60-73  ;  John's  summary  of 
her  character,  169 ;  her  drawing-book, 
173 ;  the  Marylauder  tells  his  love  to 
her,  315. 

Iris,  her  Book,  226. 

Irish  servant,  good  manners  of,  143. 

Italy,  245. 

Jeddo,  moat  at,  11. 

Jewelry,  a  mother's,  99. 

Jews,  fable  of  their  sweating  gold,  163. 

Joe,  a  handsome  Marylander,  51. 

John,  a  character  who  interjects  re 
marks,  usually  somewhat  disrespect 
ful  ;  invites  the  Professor  to  his  room, 
1G5;  fight  with  the  Koh-i-noor,  279 ; 
his  wife  and  baby  316. 

Judas,  Leonardi's  picture  of,  229. 

Justice,  a  rare  virtue,  149 ;  respect  of 
good  man  for,  150. 

Keats's  Lamia,  163. 

Kisses,  a  stolen  one  meditated,  267;  mem 
orable  ones,  268  ;  Iris  kisses  the  Little 
Gentleman  when  he  is  dying,  302. 

Knife,  as  an  instrument  for  conveyance 
of  food,  142. 

Knights,  called  "  prize-fighters  with 
iron  pots  on  their  heads,"  135. 

Knocking  a  man  down,  difficulty  of 
carrying  out  the  threat,  279. 

Knot-grass,  235. 

Knowledge  cannot  be  confined  by  pro 
fessions,  15. 

Koh-i-noor,  a  vulgarly  dressed  charac 
ter,  who  wears  a  large  diamond  (?)  pin, 
4  ;  his  fight  with  John,  279  ;  leaves 
the  Boarding-house  in  disgrace,  311. 

Kuyper,  Jan,  29. 

"  L.  B.,"  9,  20.    See  also  Leah. 

Ladies,  of  "  the  quality,"  preferred, 
136. 

Lady,  misuse  of  word,  144. 

Lady's  portrait  with  sword-thrusts 
through  it,  188. 

Laennec,  249. 

Lamia,  Keats's,  163. 

La  Monnoye's  Monsieur  de  la  Palisie, 
231. 

Landlady's  daughter,  is  thought  to  favor 
the  company  of  the  Koh-i-noor  ;  after 
his  thrashing  by  John,  she  discards 
him,  311 ;  is  to  marry  a  young  under 
taker,  312. 

Language,  the  blood  of  the  soul,  41  ; 
grows  out  of  life,  43 ;  compared  to  a 


INDEX. 


827 


watch,  with  hair-spring,  43;  its  In 
effectiveness  at  times,  181. 

Larv.c,  spiritual,  Roman  Catholics  con 
sidered  as,  242. 

Latent  caloric  of  character,  288. 

Latin  tutor,  the  father  of  Iris;  his  se 
lection  of  her  name,  60-62  ;  his  wile, 
63;  death,  Go. 

Laudanum,  overdose  of,  105. 

Laugh,  grand,  elemental,  17  ;  the  mob- 
law  of  the  features,  72 ;  of  a  girl, 
138. 

Launching  of  the  ark  of  Christianity, 
219. 

Law,  barbarisms  of,  106. 

Lay  -  sermon,  gives  the  parallax  of 
thought  and  feeling,  7 ;  punishment 
of  mechanic  for  preaching  one,  115. 

Leah,  the  witch  ancestor  of  Little  Gen 
tleman,  261 ;  her  portrait,  202.  See 
also  L.  B. 

Lecture,  exhaustion  of  ideas  by  a  schol 
ar  when  half  delivered,  24  ;  supposed 
effect  of  adverse  criticism  oi,  by 
Ananias  and  Shiuiei,  120. 

Leonardo's  picture  of  Judas,  229. 

Letter,  case  of  lady  who  used  only  one 
page  in  writing  a,  204. 

Letter  to  the  Professor  expressing  fear 
as  to  his  opinions,  104. 

Liberty,  spiritual,  battle  for,  78. 

Libraries,  college,  fated  to  buru  up,  62. 

Library,  a  sort  of  mental  chemist's 
shop,  25. 

Life,  a  great  bundle  of  little  things,  1 ; 
getting  into  the  pith  and  core  of,  10 ; 
only  the  edge  of  the  ocean  of  exist 
ence,  107 ;  obstacles  in,  179 ;  as  a 
mighty  sculptor,  193 ;  in  New  Eng 
land,  may  be  le.m  and  impoverished, 
244 ;  better  adjusted  to  wants  of  men, 
249 ;  three  wicks  to  lamp  of,  260  ;  op 
portunities  iu  America  for  large,  noble, 
284 ;  the  dying  not  in  condition  to 
judge  fairly  of,  293. 

Linwood's,  Miss,  needlework,  183. 

Listener,  a  good,  17. 

Literary  people,  amiable  relations  be 
tween,  75. 

Little  Boston,  a  nickname  of  the  Little 
Gentleman,  which  see. 

Little  Gentleman,  a  cripple,  who  ac 
tively  defends  Boston  and  Boston 
ways ;  mysterious  noises  in  his  room, 
161 ;  attempt  of  Professor  to  visit  hia 
room,  186;  his  dying  hours,  301-306; 
his  burial  place,  306,  307. 

"  Little  King  Pippin,"  231. 

Lives,  the  truest,  cut  with  many  facets, 
33. 

Localism,  dwarfing  to  mind,  87. 

Lord  Level's  grave,  267. 

Love,  the  universal  experience,  93 ; 
women's  choice  in,  159;  at  certain 
age  all  excitements  run  to,  in  women, 
160 ;  is  the  one  secret  most  women 
have  to  tell,  180  ;  indications  of,  285 ; 


not  essential  that  all  pairs  should  be 

"  born  for  each  other,"  286. 
Loyalty  of  English  not  understood  by 

Americans,  36. 
Lucerne,  bridge  at,  266. 
Lucretia,  60. 
Lungs,  one  wick  of  the  lamp  of  life, 

260. 

Ma'am  Allen,  nickname  for  character 

usually  called  the  Koh-i-noor,  79. 
Madam  Blaize,  231. 
Madeira  wine,  l-'.'i. 
M.ielzel's  Turk,  16. 
Magnolia  on  Cape  Ann,  244. 
Malcolm,   Capt.    Daniel,  his    grave  on 

Copp's  Hill,  3,  300. 
Margaret  of  Scotland,  her  kissing  Alain 

Chartier,  268. 
Man  as  man,  so  thought  of  in  America, 

36  ;  man  is  a  symbolic  worshipper  by 

nature,  117. 
Manners,  a  few  points  of,  taken  up,  139 ; 

among  the  highly  bred,  140 ;  vulgar, 

142. 
Marriage,  difficulties  in  the  way  of  .for  a 

young  man,   170;  for  money,  Land 
lady's  opinion  of,  204. 
Marriage  service,  vulgar  alteration  in, 

1-15. 
Marylander,  the,  gradually  becomes  the 

lover  of  Iris ;  his  look j,  45 ;  tells  his 

love,  315. 
Marylauders,  two  manly  specimens  of, 

51. 
Mather,  Cotton,  quotation  from  one  of 

his  sermons,  1 15. 
Mather,  Increase,  orders  Calef's  book  to 

be  burnt,  8. 

Mathers,  grave  of  the,  306. 
Mechanical  talk  of  women,  30. 
Medical  society,  supposed  creed  of,  111. 
Medicine,  errors  of,  11-13;  barbarisms 

in,  105  ;  Ministers'  opinion  about,  110 ; 

effect  upon  the  sympathies,  263.    See 

also  Homoeopathy. 
Mediocrity,  genius  an  insult  to,  241. 
Meeting-house  Hill  at  Dorchester,  256. 
Meetings,  mysterious,  56. 
Men,  life  adjusted  to  wants  of,  249. 
Mental    soprano,  barytone,  and  basso, 

37. 

Mermaids,  257. 
Messiah  of  a  new  revelation,  woman  is, 

125. 

Microcosm,  besrinning  of  life  in,  257. 
Midsummer,  225. 
Mignonette,  182. 
Milkmen,  pump-like  movement  of  their 

arms,  156. 
Milton,  his  season  for  writing,  24 ;  kisses 

given  him,  2C8. 

Mind,  with  thoughts, "compared  to  cir 
cus-rider  with  horses,  38. 
lliuk  ter,  underpaid,  emotion  at  surprise 

party,  76;    should  be  cheerful,  144 

See  alto  Clergy. 


328 


INDEX. 


Ministers,  opinion  about  medicine,  110. 

Ministration,  genius  of,  among  women, 
274. 

Ministry,  barbarisms  in,  106. 

Model  of  all  the  virtues,  a  lady  who 
brought  up  Iris ;  of  many  but  irrita 
ting  excellences,  70 ;  hatred  expressed 
for  her  merits,  101 ;  reasons  why  not 
lovable,  146-149 ;  return  to  the  Board 
ing  house,  314. 

Mollusk,  spawn  of,  257. 

Money,  power  of,  135 ;  nothing  earthly 
lasts  so  well,  151. 

Monsieur  de  la  Palisse,  of  De  la  Mon- 
noye,  231. 

Moon,  boy's  idea  of,  109. 

Moral  surgery,  its  brutality,  114. 

Mother,  young,  memory  of  an  old  man 
for,  183;  apron  strings  of  American 
mother  made  of  India  rubber,  285. 

Mother's  secret,  A ,  127. 

Motivation  of  human  will,  35  >i. 

Mouse,  technical  term  in  pugilism,  280. 

Moving  from  a  house  compared  to  dying, 
276. 

Muggletonian  sect,  294. 

Murderers,  pious  frame  of  mind  at 
death,  292. 

Musk-deer,  287. 

My  Lady  Bountiful,  231. 

Mysteries,  common  everywhere,  257. 

Names,  uncouth,  95. 

Narrow  church,  298. 

Natural  selection,  conservative  principle 
in  creation,  19. 

Nature,  fertile  in  variety,  80 ;  in  her 
mysterious  moods,  104;  makes  no 
leaps,  167. 

Navy  Yard,  Charlestown,  3. 

Needlework,  Miss  Liuwood's,  183. 

Neighbor  Walrus,  his  garden,  248. 

Nervousness,  its  resemblance  to  fear, 
255. 

New  England,  women  of,  148;  large 
number  of  crazy  people  in,  217 ;  effect 
of  its  moral  atmosphere  upon  sensi 
tive  characters,  242  ;  has  an  insuffi 
cient  flavor  of  humanity,  245 ;  its  air 
better  than  Old  England's  ale,  250. 

New  Englanders,  many  of  them  hard 
and  unimaginative,  248. 

New  York,  compared  to  Venice,  85 ; 
something  higher  demanded  of  it,  86. 

New  Yorkers,  peculiar  pronunciation  of, 
142. 

Night,  noises  in,  163. 

Nitrate  of  silver  for  epileptics,  105. 

Noises  in  the  night,  163. 

Nolan,  Captain,  at  Balaklava,  251. 

Norman  horse,  236. 

Northampton,  its  experience  with  Jona 
than  Edwards,  114. 

Nursery,  America  a  new,  for  the  race,  83. 

Oak,  67. 

Ocean  cable  literature,  26. 


Old  age,  an  infant's  life  has  the  charac 
ter  of  a  first,  66  ;  appearance  of,  pro 
duced  by  a  few  lines  in  face,  192. 

Old  Gentleman  opposite.  See  Venerable 
Gentleman. 

Old  house,  fear  of,  262. 

Old  men's  first  children,  66. 

Old  World  folks,  American  feeling  about, 
35 ;  seem  childlike,  36. 

Old  World,  evidences  of  the  past  in, 
245 ;  air  of,  good  for  nothing,  249 ; 
its  system  one  of  intellectual  locks 
and  canals,  295. 

O'm,  sacred  word  of  Hindoo  mythology, 
7,  241. 

Opening  of  the  Piano,  73. 

Opinions,  of  more  value  than  arguments, 
116,  if  uuattacked,  beneath  con 
tempt,  119 ;  right  to  hold  one's  own 
opinion  defended,  123,  124. 

Opium  of  the  heart,  foxglove  called, 
261. 

Opium-Eater,  De  Quincey's,  238. 

Orion,  nebula  of,  78. 

Otis,  James,  15. 

Overcome  family,  their  r61es  in  the  af 
fecting  scene  called  the  Surprise  par 
ty,  76. 

"Paddy,"  liability  of  using  the  word 
before  an  Irish  gentleman,  95 

Paduasoy,  262. 

Paleness  of  fighting-boy  before  contest, 
268. 

Papin's  digester,  149. 

Parabola,  237. 

Parallax  of  thought  given  by  lay-ser 
mons,  7. 

Park  Street  Church,  11. 

Passions,  secret,  91  ;  the  pale  ones  the 
fiercest,  268. 

Past,  effect  of  the,  246. 

PeciUiarity,  tendency  to  touch  upon 
another's,  94. 

Peirce,  Benjamin,  49. 

Peonies,  248. 

Percy,  Lord,  arm-chair  in  which  he  used 
to  sit,  188. 

Philadelphia,  84. 

Phillips,  hanging  of,  3. 

Philosophers,  class  of,  who  exhibit  a 
small  truth  bandaged  to  look  large, 
39. 

Photograph,  give  features  one  particu 
lar  look,  191. 

Phrenology,  visit  to  emporium  of,  195 ; 
result  of  examination,  197  ;  short  lec 
ture  on  phrenology  and  its  resem 
blance  to  a  pseudo-science,  197 ;  its 
truth  cannot  be  proved  by  reason  of 
the  double  walls  of  head,  199;  cases 
which  prove  nothing,  200. 

Physicians.     See  Doctors. 

Pigment,  dark,  of  certain  animals,  229. 

"  Pious  and  painefull,"  146. 

Plainness  of  speech  and  manners,  145. 

Plantain,  235. 


INDEX. 


329 


Poe,  Edgar  A.,  281 

Poets,  never  young  in  a  sense,  239 ; 
flight  unerring  like  that  of  goose, 
240;  find  material  everywhere,  244; 
want  a  home,  246. 

Poisoners,  painted  of  dark  hue,  229. 

Politics,  common  people  of  New  Eng 
land  will  not  stop  talking,  118 ;  Amer 
icanized,  207,  208. 

Poor  Relation  of  the  Landlady,  a  woman 
past  youth,  and  of  pronounced  opin 
ions  usually  counter  to  others,  21,  etc. 

Poor  relations,  social  attentions  to,  140. 

Population  of  earth-born  intelligences, 
107. 

Portrait,  lady's,  with  sword  -  thrust 
through  it,  188  ;  one's  own  apt  to  be 
a  surprise  to  him,  190  ;  artist's  method 
of  securing,  1 VI  ;  resemblances  to  va 
rious  relatives,  192;  of  Leah  the 
witch,  262. 

Position.    See  Social  position. 

Potter,  Paulus,  29. 

Prayer  for  the  dying,  303. 

President  of  the  United  States,  115; 
supposed  case  of  one  who  is  not  a  gen 
tleman,  141. 

Principle,  dying  for  a,  higher  than  scold- 
iug  for  it,  121. 

Privileged  class  of  gentlemen  and  ladies, 
inevitable,  134. 

"  Prize-fighters  with  iron  pots  on  their 
heads,"  knights  called,  135. 

Prodigal  son,  sermon  on,  117  ;  consola 
tion  of  parable,  302. 

Professions,  digging  a  moat  round  their 
corporations,  II;  knowledge  cannot  be 
limited  by,  14  ;  the  learned,  105. 

Pronunciation,  peculiar,  in  New  York, 
142. 

Professor,  a,  tends  towards  conserva 
tism,  14. 

Prophet  of  evil,  dreadful  business  of 
being,  252. 

Protestantism,  the  having  no  woman  to 
he  worshipped  makes  it  unpoetical, 
178. 

Provisional  races,  aborigines  called,  82. 

Pseudo-science,  definition  of,  197  ;  not 
wholly  a  lie,  198. 

Pudding,  sent  by  widow  to  some  elderly 
ladies,  232. 

Pudding-stone,  256. 

Puffing,  anonymous,  75. 

Pugilistic  encounter,  279. 

Pulpit,  spiritualism  as  a  Nemesis  of  the, 
13. 

Pump,  a  full,  impatience  of  a  congrega 
tion  compared  to  restraint  placed  on, 
216. 

Punch,  whiskey,  132. 

Pundit,  his  awe  of  word  O'm,  7. 

Pyramids,  preferable  to  railroad  village, 
246. 

Quality,  the,  definition  of,  133 ;  quality- 
ladies  preferred,  136. 


Questions  submitted  to  the  Professor. 

203. 

Quincy  Market,  196. 
Quintain,  riding  at  the,  120. 

Rack,  207. 

Railroad  village,  attractiveness  of,  246. 

Raphael,  early  death  of,  157 ;  his  Santo 
Apolliua,  178. 

Reformers,  their  danger  is  from  the 
flattery  of  abuse,  202. 

Religion,  its  currency  consists  of  polar 
ized  words,  6;  should  belong  to  the 
common  people,  107  ;  science  not  r.n 
enemy  of,  113  ;  women  more  religious 
than  men,  124,  209  ;  time  for  it  to  be 
Americanized,  207.  See  alto  Creed; 
Soul ;  Spiritualism. 

Religious  opinions,  difficulty  of  holding 
one's  own,  92 ;  each  man  has  some 
peculiar  to  himself,  297. 

Religious  spirit,  212. 

Repulus  returning  to  Carthage,  122. 

"  Remarkable  judgment,"  quoted  from 
Cotton  Mather,  115. 

Rembrandt,  29. 

Resistance,  Sam.  Adams's  word,  41. 

Rest,  idea  of,  inseparable  from  death, 
276. 

Reversed  current  in  flow  of  mind,  147. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  29. 

Rich  people,  more  apt  to  be  agreeable 
than  others,  133;  their  refinement 
and  delicacy,  135. 

Richardson,  G.  W.,  49. 

Ring,  once  property  of  a  Salem  witch,  9. 

River  of  Life,  dreamed  of  by  the  dying, 

Robinson  of  Ley  den,  17*. 

Roman  Catholic  church,  its  consolations, 
291. 

Roman  Catholics,  looked  upon  by  Prot 
estants  as  spiritual  larvae,  242. 

Romance,  materials  for,  in  boarding- 
house,  94. 

Rome,  battle  of  three-hilled  city,  against 
seven-hilled  city,  78 ;  active  mind  of 
century  tending  either  to  Rome  or 
Reason,  128  ;  age  of,  245. 

Romulus,  82. 

"  Rookery,  The,"  310. 

Rousseau,  effect  of  the  past  upon,  246. 

Roxbury  pudding-stone,  256. 

Russell,  Henry  Sturgis,  166. 

Sabbath,  word  misused  for  Sunday,  312. 
Sabbath  face,  mournful  suggestions  of, 

215. 

Saint  Anthony  the  reformer,  202. 
Saints,    three    among    women   to    one 

among  men,  121. 
Saltfish,   constant  diet  of,  compared  to 

ttxity  of  opinions  in  some  people,  93. 
Savate,  French  method  of  boxing,  53. 
Schoolmistress,  the,  309. 
Science  not  the  enemy  of  religion,  113. 
Scribblers,  anonymous,  118. 


330 


INDEX. 


Bculpin,  a   nickname  for  the   cripple,  I 
usually  called  the  Little  Gentleman, 
which  see ;  the  fish,  described,  2. 

Sea-anemones,  145. 

Sea-serpent,  horse-mackerel  taken  for, 
257. 

Second  childhood,  counterpoised  by  a 
first  old  age,  66. 

Second  sight,  250. 

Secoud  natural  birth,  243. 

Secret,  any  one's,  is  open,  if  waited  for 
long  enough,  90. 

Secret  drawer,  discovery  of,  in  old  cabi 
net  desk,  91. 

Secret,  a  great,  intimation  of  among 
many  persons,  177 ;  it  is  not  the  se 
cret  of  love,  180. 

Seed,  southern,  in  northern  soil,  242. 

Self-assertion,  little  of  among  ladies,  136. 

Seminaries,  called  young-lady  factories, 
239. 

Senile  dementia  of  civilization,  11. 

Sentiment  defended,  124;  Christianity 
full  of,  302 ;  Christ's  life  animated 
with,  313. 

Sermons,  hearers  of,  entitled  to  opinions 
on  theology,  111  ;  a  few  famous,  117. 
See  also  Lay  sermon. 

Sextons,  cheerful  people,  312. 

Shell-fish,  very  minute  eggs  of,  257. 

Shelley,  lines  of,  quoted,  239. 

Shimei,  supposed  critic  of  lecture,  120. 

Ship  drawn  by  tug,  compared  to  hus 
band  and  wife,  289. 

Shop,  displaying  perennial  articles  for 
sale,  231. 

Sick-rooms,  conduct  of  the  underbred  in, 
144. 

Shi,  old  dead,  in  secret  drawer  of  soul, 
91. 

Sincerity,  dangers  of,  30. 

Singing,  congregational,  215 ;  imperfec 
tions  of,  216. 

Sixth  sense  in  women,  266. 

Smibert,  262. 

Smith,  Samuel  Francis,  50. 

Smithate  of  truth,  297. 

Suiithite,  Smith  is  always  a,  297. 

Soap,  perfumed,  98. 

Social  position,  134;  elective  character 
of,  134 ;  settled  mostly  by  women, 
135. 

Society  for  the  propagation  of  intelli 
gence  among  the  comfortable  classes, 
56. 

Society,  tries  to  grind  lives  to  single  fiat 
surface,  33 ;  high  society  contains 
much  real  equality,  140  ;  heroism 
in,  140  ;  its  love  for  abundant  vitality, 
150 ;  has  place  for  every  form  of  tal 
ent,  285. 

Socrates,  drinking  his  hemlock,  122. 

Solomon,  214. 

Somnambulist  boarder,  168. 

Song  for  a  temperance  celebration,  33. 

Soul,  is  to  look  for  truth  with  its  own 
eyes,  6 ;  its  being  an  infinite,  instan 


taneous  consciousness,  10  ;  a  little  se 
cret  drawer  in,  91 ;  conception  of  how 
it  appears,  131 ;  it  thinks  to  know  the 
body  it  inhabits,  190 ;  disquiet  in,  217 ; 
need  of  transplanting  some  souls,  243 ; 
according  to  Descartes,  is  in  the  core 
of  the  braiu,  247. 

Speeches  of  dying  men,  little  value  of, 
292,  293. 

Spiritual  transparency  of  golden  blondes, 
229. 

Sp  ritual  standard  of  different  classes, 
121. 

Spiritualism,  is  undermining  accepted 
ideas,  12  ;  as  a  Nemesis  of  the  pulpit, 
13 ;  has  made  the  destiny  of  the  race 
a  matter  of  common  reflection,  107. 

Star-of-Bethlehem,  flower,  247. 

Stars  and  stripes,  87. 

Starvation  the  natural  end  of  tutors,  62. 

State  House,  Boston,  55, 281 ;  view  from, 
217. 

Steam-tug.     See  Tug. 

Stillness,  vulgar  persons  cannot  pre 
serve  it,  139. 

Stockings,  perennially  displayed  for  sale, 
231. 

Stone,  with  whitish  band,  247  ;  large,  to 
keep  wolves  from  graves,  263. 

Stoops,  charms  of.  224. 

Store-room,  dark,  188. 

Strong,  the,  hate  the  weak,  19. 

Stylish  women,  155. 

Succory,  234. 

Suffering,  professional  hardness  to,  263. 

Suicides,  166. 

"  Summons,  A,  for  sleepers,"  sermon, 
quoted,  117. 

Sun,  slight  effect  on  iceberg,  288. 

Sun-day  hymn,  319. 

Sunsets  iu  Boston,  82. 

Superstitions,  186,  270. 

Surface-Christianity,  good  breeding  is, 
133. 

Surgeon,  hardness  in  a,  263 ;  a  tender 
hearted  instance,  264. 

Surgery,  moral,  its  brutality,  114. 

Surprise  party,  description  of,  75. 

Swans,  236. 

Sweating  gold,  fable  of  the  Jews',  163. 

Swellings,  cured  by  dead  man's  hand, 
246. 

Swift,  as  Cadenus,  89. 

Swimming  glands  in  blood,  58. 

Symbols,  reverence  for,  292. 

Sympathies  of  surgeons,  compared  with 
those  of  theologians,  263. 

Tadpoles,  effect  of  dark  upon,  242. 

Talent  and  genius  compared,  240;  so 
ciety  has  place  for  every  form  of,  285. 

Talipes  varus,  9. 

Talkers,  apt  to  say  unwise  things,  18. 

Talking,,  uselessness  of,  with  some 
women,  274.  See  also  Conversation. 

Tartini's  "Devil's  sonata,"  308. 

Tea-kettle,    death    of     children     from 


INDEX. 


331 


drinking  hot  water  from  spouts  of, 
166. 

Teeth,  46 ;  supposed  article  of  a  medi 
cal  creed  concerning,  111. 

Temperance,  excess  better  than  hypoc 
risy,  33. 

Temperance  celebration,  song  for,  33. 

Temient,  Rev.  William,  trance  of,  178. 

Testimony  of  the  dying  to  be  received 
with  caution,  292. 

Thames,  Briton's  stockades  in,  245. 

Theatricals,  college,  17. 

Thirst,  in  torture,  305. 

Thomas,  Francis,  4'J. 

Thornton,  Abraham,  claims  wager  by 
battle,  106. 

Thought,  the  excretion  of  mental  res 
piration,  24  ;  runs  in  layers,  37  ; 
scheme  of  movement  of  three  inde 
pendent  consciousnesses  iu  one  mind 
at  once,  37  ;  continuity  of  thought 
and  action,  38  ;  mind  among  thoughts 
compared  to  circus-rider  with  horses, 
38 ;  a  word  the  saddle  of,  38  ;  recur 
rence  of  same  thoughts,  56  ;  multitude 
of,  compared  with  blood  globules, 
59. 

Three  maiden  sisters,  the  book  of,  230. 

Three  Words,  The,  180. 

Thumbscrews,  207. 

Tiber,  246. 

Time  and  space,  39. 

Tobacco,  137. 

Torture,  implements  and  methods  of, 
207  ;  thirst  excited  by,  305. 

Torturing  instinct,  95. 

Townsend,  Solomon  Davis,  264  n. 

Traceries  in  margin  of  drawing-book, 
234. 

Tracts,  religious,  110. 

Trains  to  dresses,  vulgar  use  of,  154. 

Trance,  237  ;  mostly  peculiar  to  women, 
238 ;  instance  of  ,"267. 

Transparency,  spiritual,  of  golden- 
blondes,  229. 

Transplanting,  necessary  for  souls  as 
for  plants,  243. 

Trigamy,  seemingly  advocated  in  the 
Bible,  5. 

Trilobite,  fossil,  94. 

Tripod  of  life,  the  brain,  heart,  and 
lungs,  260.  . 

Trot,  picture  of  a,  1C5. 

Trotting  horses.     See  Horses. 

Trust,  Hymn  of,  282. 

Truth,  soul  must  look  for,  with  its  own 
eyes,  6 ;  is  tough,  109 ;  iconoclasm, 
only  way  to  get  at,  117  ;  private  prop 
erty  in,  295. 

Tug,  ship  drawn  by,  compared  to  hus 
band  and  wife,  289. 

Turk,  Maelzel's,  16. 

Turtle,  and  his  shell,  28. 

Tutor,  starvation  is  natural  end  of  a, 
62. 

Twins,  in  the  birth  of  thought,  56. 

Two  Streams,  The,  153. 


Uncomfortable  people,  finally  take  spite 
against  themselves,  272. 

Under  tlie  violets,  253. 

Underbred  people,  their  conduct  to 
wards  the  sick,  144. 

Undertaker,  the  young,  312,  318. 

Undertakers,  cheerful  people,  312. 

Unwise  things  apt  to  be  said  by  talkers, 
18. 

Usher,  Archbishop,  precise  date  of  cre 
ation  given  by,  113,  210. 

Variety,  Nature  fertile  in,  80. 
Venerable  Gentleman,  a  character  who 

has  had  a  past  romance,  21,  etc. 
Venice,  New  York  compared  to,  85. 
Vesalius,  29. 
Vessels,  collision  of,  56. 
Yi  llai  je,  railroad,  attractiveness  of,  246. 
Violin,  Guarnerius,  308. 
Virgil,  61. 

Virginia's  death,  60. 
Visscher,  Cornelius,  29. 
Vitality,  fashion  full  of,  136;  fondues* 

of  society  for,  150. 
Voice,  potent  influence  of  a  child's,  45; 

mysterious  woman's  voice   heard  in 

night,  174 ;  proves  to  be  a  violin,  308. 
Voltaire,  called  "  wicked  Mr.  Arouet," 

69. 

Voting,  independent,  207. 
Vox-humana  of  the  organ,  308. 
Vulgar  people.    See  Underbred  people. 
Vulgarity,  making  believe  to  be  what 

you  are  not,  is  essence  of,  164. 

Wager  by  battle,  106. 

WaJl-flcwerg,  kindness  to,  140. 

Walpurgis  night,  164. 

Walrus,  Neighbor,  his  garden,  248. 

Warren,  Joseph,  15. 

Washington's  Farewell  address,  87. 

Washington  societies,  87. 

Watch,  meddling  with  hairspring  of, 
43. 

Watching  with  sick,  272. 

We  will  not  speak  of  tears  to-night,  77. 

Weak,  the,  hated  by  the  strong,  19. 

Wealth,  durability  of,  151 ;  foolish  talk 
about,  152. 

Webster,  Noah,  his  spelling,  41 ;  grati 
tude  owed  him,  44. 

Webster's  Unabridged,  criticised,  40. 

Weeds,  not  too  humble  for  artist's  eye, 
234. 

Wesley's  "  sulphur  and  supplication," 
110. 

Whiskey  punch,  132. 

"  White  man's  foot,"  Indian  name  for 
plantain,  235. 

Wicks,  three,  to  lamp  of  life,  260. 

Widow's  pudding,  a,  sent  to  some  el 
derly  ladies,  232. 

Wife,  faithful  little,  of  genius,  compared 
to  tug  drawing  tall  ship,  289. 

Wild  creature  dormant  in  each  heart, 
94. 


332 


INDEX. 


Wilkes,  John,  his  saying  about  cutting 
out  the  handsomest  man,  89. 

Will,  misunderstandings  in  regard  to  the 
limitations  of,  34  ;  bias  decides  choice 
in  motivation,  35  n.  ;  steps  from  one 
moving  thought  to  another,  39. 

Wine,  a  specific  against  dull  dinners, 
32 ;  its  use  should  be  open,  33. 

Wink,  called  a  palpebral  spasm,  14. 

Wisdom,  often  learned  by  folly,  13. 

Witch,  portrait  of,  262. 

Witch-marks,  262. 

Witchcraft,  Calef 's  book  on,  8 ;  sou 
venir,  9 ;  repeal  of  statutes  against, 
106;  clergymen  rejoicing  in  the  de 
lusion,  122. 

Wives,  the  marrying  of  three,  seemingly 
advocated  in  the  Bible,  5. 

Wolves,  great  stone  on  graves  to  keep 
them  away,  263. 

Woman's  voice,  heard  in  the  night,  174 ; 
proved  to  be  a  Guarnerius  violin,  308. 

Women,  some  are  mechanical  talkers, 
30;  can  keep  their  minds  detached 
from  their  talk,  31 ;  creation  of,  50 ; 
judicial  character  not  captivating  in, 
101 ;  three  saints  among,  to  one  among 
men,  121 ;  the  messiah  of  a  new  reve 
lation,  125 ;  they  mostly  settle  matters 
of  social  position,  135 ;  intellectual 
process  should  not  be  too  evident  in, 
147  ;  brain-women  do  not  interest  like 
heart- women,  148;  elegance  of,  150; 
stylish,  155  ;  the  men  whom  they 
marry,  157  ;  their  choice  of  love,  159  ; 
love-magnets,  160 ;  their  effect  upon 
men,  177  ;  faces  sometimes  portray  a 
great  secret,  178 ;  often  their  one  se 
cret  is  "  I  love  you,"  180  ;  more  reli 
gious  than  men,  209  ;  effect  of  genius 
in,  241 ;  more  subject  to  atrophy  of 
heart,  249;  immovability  of  some, 
274 ;  some  good  ones  have  no  right  to 


marry  perfectly  good  men,  287  ;  hap 
piness  of  marriage  of  women  of  gen 
ius  with  truthful,  simple  men,  287. 
Word,   the    saddle    of    a    thought,  38; 
worth  of  words,  41  ;  words,  not  looks, 
win  women,  89 ;  mean  little  as  com 
pared  to  features,  181. 
Words  and  phrases,  namely  :  — 
Bo'kays,  185. 

Bread-basket,  technical  term  in  pu 
gilism,  280. 
Carapace,  28. 
Cherry-pictorial,  132. 
Cuss,  21. 

Dynamometer,  93. 
Edulcorated,  62. 
Endosmosis,  95. 
Epeolatry,  117. 
Eudiometer,  72. 
Haow,  44. 
Museum,  97. 

Palpebral  spasm,  a  wink,  14. 
Pimpant,  136. 
Shooing  hens,  248. 
Straw  in  the  bung-hole  of  the  uni 
verse,  24. 

Wordsworth,  his  Soy  of  Windermere, 
160  ;  seems  to  have  solved  some  of  the 
great  secrets  of  life,  180. 
Works  of  art  in  Professor's  room  enu 
merated,  29. 

Worthy  lakes,  graves  of  the,  3,  306. 
Wrinkles,  cheapest  coat-of-mail  against 
Cupid,  223. 

Yankee  appellations,  95. 

Yankees  are  a  kind  of  gypsies,  246. 

Yorkshire  groom,  fight  with  a  sopho 
more,  53. 

Young  fellow.    See  John. 

Young-lady  factories,  239. 

Young  men,  American,  opportunities  of, 
283;  beauty  of  Greek,  283. 


m^        J^JONAJ:  LIBRARY  FAC.LITY 


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